A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 68 Dancing Spanners
Continued in the best side of the Green Dragon Inn from GOM 67

~Women’s Issues~

Out of the blue in a natural lull in the women’s conversation, Jane who was known to be trans by all the Bearthwaite women though few of the outsider women were aware of that, asked, “What did you reckon to the meeting Sun and Abbey called in the church, Elle?”

“I think he was wise to hand the matter over to Abbey, but it was clear that they’d discussed the matter in depth before the meeting. It was equally clear that Murray as well as Chance had been involved in their discussions.” As the outsiders looked puzzled Elle expanded, “Sun and Abbey are the two Bearthwaite family doctors that live and work in the village, there are numerous others who live and work elsewhere. Chance is now our main accountant, but Murray who is now effectively retired has been his mentor since he came here. The church hasn’t been a church for a great many years, and it’s been a village community meeting place for almost as long. It was a ruin when we bought it and all else the Church of England owned here in the valley. We paid peanuts for it and did all the restoration work ourselves. Even the carvings on the ends of the pews and the stained glass were created by two local crafts women. Sun and Abbey called the meeting to discuss and explain a significant expansion of our medical services.

“Specifically, they wish to spend half a million pounds on a state of the art piece of breast screening equipment. Only such a modern set up can detect early stage cancers in patients. It can also detect cancers in men which are rare events, but the condition is a well documented one, and of course trans women are as subject to breast cancer as all other women and there are a number of trans Bearthwaite women. With all that that entails in terms of training our own mammographers and their support staff the cost will be well over a million pounds. Probably about two million by the time we have our own small hospital to set it all up in. The Bearthwaite community has the money, but there is a worldwide shortage, and a desperate UK shortage of mammographers. I think it was Chance our finance wizard who said twenty percent of needed mammography posts are unfilled, but it may have been Abbey. I suspect the meeting was called purely to set the scene so folk know what is going on, rather than have something sprung on them with decisions already made, Our professionals quite properly wish the rest of us to be involved in the decision making process.

“Our doctors wish to break the NHS’ insistence on their women only training for mammography stance that exists in the UK and virtually everywhere else in the world too. Cutting it short, only fully qualified female radiographers can do any of the mammography courses available in the UK and because only the NHS have the facilities to offer those courses men are excluded. They won’t train male radiographers in mammography and they will only employ female mammographers. Just about every radiographer’s professional organisation in the world has agreed for many years that the situation is ridiculously outdated when men do everything else like gynæ stuff, breast surgery, midwifery and all else to do with women you can think of. The evidence is clear, women are dieing from a preventable condition because of a shortage of mammographers leading to ridiculously long waiting lists for an appointment. That waiting list possibly exists purely because the NHS won’t train highly qualified willing staff just because they are men.

“Sun and Abbey have dreamt up a way to deal with the situation. If we have our own facility and a mechanism for obtaining qualified women and men trained outside the UK and women trained within the UK there is no law that says they can’t work as mammographers in the UK provided they have a recognised qualification. Since the NHS has already employed women trained in Malta for years they are not in a position to say that the Maltese qualification is inadequate if we employ men trained there. It doesn’t actually matter to Bearthwaite women because our medical practice here just books us in as private patients with a maximum waiting time of a few days for a screening appointment. Too, Sun has been here a lot longer than Abbey and women got used to him doing all the gynæ work when it was him doing the work or having to travel over fifty miles to see a female doctor. Many such female doctors won’t see a woman from here because they’re over worked and we already have a medical centre here, and most of the nearby medical centres don’t have a female family doctor.

“When Abbey arrived the women here, especially the lasses still at school, wanted to continue with Sun because they were used to him and they knew him well. The plan had originally been that Abbey would take over the regular gynæ clinic and Sun would do the regular diabetes clinic, but the entire womenfolk here of all ages wouldn’t agree to changing their doctor just because it was gynæ related, what the young lasses here refer to as knickers off appointments. Sun and Abbey agreed that Sun would carry on with the gynæ clinic and Abby would take over the diabetes clinic, which was a much better situation from the Bearthwaite womenfolk’s point of view. Any woman or girl here can see Abbey specifically if they book an appointment, but as far as I am aware none has ever done so. Abbey’s view is that such things are not women’s issues, especially here where there are very few single adult women or men come to that, they are family issues and family includes men. There will be a questionnaire going around some time for all of us to fill in on the issue. All of us means men and lads as well as women and lasses, but I reckon it’s already clear what we’ll all say.”

“What’s that?” asked a sour faced, skinny woman in her late twenties or early thirties who was wearing a shapeless dress that seemed designed to deny her sex. The Bearthwaite women silently if cynically considered that she would have objected to having her breasts fondled by a man who loved her, never mind clinically handled by a man, or a woman come to that, who was only interested in what his equipment could find inside them, though some doubted she’d ever be able to find a man who loved her if her facial expression and tone of voice were reflections of her mindset. All the Bearthwaite women wondered who she was, why she was there and who, if any, she’d come with. Ellery, who owned the Bearthwaite beauty salon was regarded by the womenfolk of Bearthwaite as a genius when she had a pair of hair dresser’s scissors in her hand. She cut most of the local women’s hair, though her assistants did virtually everything else. After a good look at the woman Ellery wondered who cut her hair because to her it looked like she cut it herself with a carving knife.

“Aggie, I reckon you should repeat what you said at the meeting,” Ellen said with a face she was clearly struggling to keep straight. The other Bearthwaite women realising what Ellen was setting up were trying just as hard to avoid laughing.

“Okay,” said Aggie agreeably. Aggie who was nigh to eighty and massively bosomed, stood, ladled another brandy punch into her glass and ticked against her name in the notebook on the bar indicating she’d had another, it was a modern day equivalent of a slate that she’d settle up at the end of the evening, before sitting down again to talk, “I explained that for me screening has always been a seriously bad experience, not because as I said it’s a hell of a big job breaking out, 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, so in theory I should be pretty safe now, but like the rest of us ower seventy as live here the medical centre’s computer system automatically requests a screening appointment for me every three years. I admitted that I’m not clever, but I’m far from stupid. I’ve got as far as to being eighty next birthday, and I don’t want to die early from sumat as I don’t need to. I said as none of the lasses in my family as I know about ever had breast cancer, but it’s scary just thinking about it all the same. I really don’t wish to contemplate life wi’ out ’em, and sure as hell Frank would be gutted.” Yet again there were chuckles and murmurs of agreement amongst virtually all the women present.

“I think what Ellen wants me to tell you that I said was that I couldn’t see as having a man doing the business ’ld mek any difference to me because I’d still be terrified, and the last thing I’d be worried about was if he were a perve. I added that I’ve been married to Frank for ower sixty years, so I know I can cope wi’ that. Actually it’s quite nice really because he is gentle, though I didn’t say that in the church.” Aggie spoke with a naturally strong Bearthwaite dialect, but it had become stronger and more old fashioned as she’d continued to speak. The Bearthwaite women realised that was because she obviously considered the outsider woman with a face like a yard o’ tripe as ’ld curdle milk, as Aggie would have put it, was challenging not just herself as a woman but the entire womenfolk of her unique culture and she was doubling down as a Bearthwaite woman not backing down as if she were a victim for some outsider fanatic, whom she didn’t even regard as a woman, to target in support of her bigoted view of the way the world should be. It was a lesson the young lasses took on board from one of their most highly respected rôle models. For seventeen of them Aggie was their great grandmother and two of them were pregnant with her great great grandchildren. They’d known her their entire lives and yet she could still surprise them with her unshakable dignity in the face of outsider contempt which was something they all faced from time to time from the odd tourist or two.

The local women were chuckling not just at what Aggie had said which to Bearthwaite women was just a woman accepting and enjoying her womanhood and all that went with it, but at the horrified look on the face of the woman who’d asked what the response to the questionnaire would be. Aggie stated with steel in her voice looking the woman straight in the eyes, “There’s only twa(1) reasons lasses a breasts, the main and most important yan(2) is for feeding babbies(3) wi’. My days o’ feeding babbies are lang ower, though I mind it well wi’ considerable fondness and pleasure too. Well I ought te, I fed fourteen till they were more interested in food as they could grab wi’ their hands than in what they could have from me. All were at least fifteen month auld and a couple o’ ’em only lost interest in me at turned twa. I niver weant any on ’em,(4) they weant ’emsels. It’s by far the easiest road o’ doing it, nay tears, nay tantrums, easy, and as they lose interest your milk just gradually fades away wi’ nay need for pills or owt from the like o’ Sun, Abbey or any yan else. God alone knaws(5) how many others I fed, like most o’ the lasses here if bairns wanted fed I fed ’em. When they were a bit older sometimes they just wanted it for comfort. It’s a wicked lass as won’t comfort a bairn in need o’ it, and if their friends want te try what harm is it doing te any? After all it’s what you’ve got ’em for and not even having sex meks you feel more o’ a lass than feeding a bairn does.

“The second reason lasses have ’em is a bonus. As is proper our menfolk tek a great deal o’ enjoyment out o’ ’em and that properly provides us wi’ a great deal o’ pleasure and no lass is ever te auld for being appreciated in that way. For sure I’m definitely not te auld te enjoy being appreciated that way, and my Frank always did tek a deal o’ satisfaction from watching me feed his bairns which made me feel special because te him I was special and I still am, even if I do need an engineering grade bra wi’ twa inch [50mm] padded shoulder straps te stop ’em reaching my waist these days.” The woman had definitely been put in her place. She was stunned not just by the ancient looking Aggie’s public announcement of her still taking pleasure from her sex life, even if her breasts did reach down nearly to her waist as a result of her feeding her fourteen children and as she put it ‘God alone knaws how many others,’ but even more by the unanimous approval and endorsement that she’d received from the other Bearthwaite women of all ages from teens right up to her own age. Few of the Bearthwaite women believed she would return for a second visit.

~Daphne’s Tale~

“Given recent events, I’d like to tell you about my experiences if I may?”

All the older women immediately realised from the tone of Daphne’s voice that there would be considerable emotional pain involved and many of them considered a connection with the recent village meeting concerning the creation of a Bearthwaite mammography facility to be likely, which explained Daphne’s reactions to her own words. All, even Elle, looked to Gladys to respond. Gladys had a first class honours degree in psychology and for many years had been known to understand folks’ needs at a much deeper level than most folk. She’d had a traumatic early life and Grayson Smith, Bearthwaite’s educational psychologist, had said many a time when she’d managed to break through to children who’d been seriously damaged before they’d taken to the streets and been rescued by the Street Rangers, ‘Gladys has lived where I have only studied.’ “Daphne, please do not feel under any obligation to tell us owt. We have no right to know, and if it is going to be as painful as it sounds we who are your neighbours and your friends would far rather you did not put yourself through what I suspect will be a traumatic experience if you continue.”

Daphne looked upset and there were tears in her eyes as she sniffed into her handkerchief. Then she seemed to physically stiffen as her resolve could be seen to harden on her face. She pushed her empty glass towards Brigitte and asked, “Brigitte replace my glass with one of the large balloon glass and give me a measure of punch and mix a double of that powerful Jamaican rum into it please. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I don’t usually drink much, but I can drink Stephen under the table when I do. If I run out which is possible I’ll have to order another won’t I?” Since her husband Stephen was a colossus of a man all the women who knew him were stunned since Daphne was possibly five feet three and of a slight build, but they knew that she’d be telling them the truth. With her drink in front of her Daphne made a start. “It’s funny in a way really because I met Stephen when he was unconscious in a club after his workmates had been slipping shorts into his pints. Apparently that’s what some men do to their friends on their birthdays, they think it’s funny to watch their friends pass out from alcohol they’d no idea they’d been drinking.

“With Stephen passed out I tried to discover his address, but they wouldn’t tell me, and he had no ID with his address on it in his wallet, so I gave them a piece of my mind, which was pointless because they were on the point of passing out too. I rang for a taxi from the firm I always used because they had a lot of women driving over the evenings and during the night shift. They knew who I was and knew I was a nurse because I was regularly collected from and taken to work in my uniform, so I explained what had happened and asked if they would provide me with a big strong man to help me get Stephen into the cab and into my flat at the other end. I’d never seen that particular driver before, but he was the size of Alf. He had a good sense of humour because the first thing he said was, ‘Am I big enough, Love?’ I laughed and said, ‘You’ll just about do,’ which made him laugh. I gave him a tenner, which was a lot of money for a tip in those days, and told him that was for helping me and the fare would be separate. He picked Stephen up off the floor like he was weightless and had no trouble at all getting him into the cab. He passed me a huge towel and a bucket and said, ‘If he’s sick try to keep my cab as clean as possible will you, Love.’

“I’ll give Stephen his due he can keep his drink down. “I’ve seen him drunk a few times but I’ve never seen him be sick. He says it’s due to his tight fisted Presbyterian upbringing which insisted that the stuff’s too expensive to throw away. On the fifteen minute cab ride the cabbie asked me if Stephen were my boyfriend. I told him we’d never met before and I hadn’t even exchanged a single word with him yet. The cabbie said, ‘Struth, Love, I never bought into that business about nurses being angels, but I reckon you must be the real deal.’ He laid Stephen down on my bedsit floor and refused to take the fare when I asked how much I owed him, I was expecting about four pounds fifty. He said the restoration of his faith in human nature was more than enough and refused to charge me. Stephen came to at lunchtime the following day. I gave him mug of tea and a couple of aspirin. He said that he had a head like Cadishead, complete with the Lancashire Tar Distillers. I asked what that meant. Cadishead is a village in what was Lancashire before it became part of the city of Salford. The tar distillers is a big factory there. He spent part of his childhood living near there though he was born in Hawick(6) in Scotland.

“I recommended that he found himself a different set of friends because I didn’t consider doing what they had done to be something a friend would do. We started seeing one another regularly and it was at a wedding of a work colleague that I didn’t really wish to attend that he saw me drink for the first time. I was drinking so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. He said he was impressed and I told him I’d have been more impressed if we’d managed to avoid the affair altogether and had gone for quiet meal somewhere where I could have enjoyed a glass or two of wine and a cup of tea afterwards. A few weeks after the wedding we came across the huge cabbie when we jumped a cab from just around the corner from the taxi rank. He told Stephen if he had any brains at all he’d dump his mates and make sure of me before someone else did. That was how I was proposed to indirectly, courtesy of the biggest taxi driver I’ve ever come across. Six months later we were married and bought a small semi detached house with a large attached garage that Stephen converted into a workshop studio for me so I could start on what eventually became my career.”

Gladys couldn’t see where Daphne’s tale was going and what it had to do with her obvious anguish that somehow she believed was connected with mammography, but she considered it was not her place to make a comment even if she were the landlady of the inn. Her sense of good manners dictated that she allow Daphne to get there in a manner and timing of her own choosing. Whilst Daphne took a mouthful of her punch Gladys said to the outsider women, “The two Green Dragons you can see over by the entrance doors were created by Daphne,” as heads turned there were expressions of awe from the visitors. “And if you think that is impressive you should see what she created in the taproom.(7) Just a minute, Daphne, I’ll play the video of the taproom that the kids made for their ICT project. They gave me a copy and Harry put it onto the system for me. I’ll put it up on the wide screen.” The video had been well produced, for the camera had panned right around the taproom not missing a single detail, then there was a series of sequences focussing on each of individual scenes. The freshly calved iceberg with the Viking dragon ship in the fjord, the pack pony trail, the dank forest scene, the three desert scenes with the huge image of Shai Hulud looming over the corner, the Viking farm, the Sámi encampment with the endless herd of reindeer, the yard of ale in the talons of the dragon that hung over the bar and most impressive image of all: the monstrous dragon that stretched half way around the room. After all the stunned gasps of surprise quietened, Gladys added, “If any of you wish to go next door to see for yourself call in any morning or afternoon any day of the week, weekends included. I certainly don’t recommend that you go to see when the Bearthwaite Chapter of the Grumpy Old Men’s Society occupies the taproom. It’s just not done unless you are a barmaid or a woman working in the oldest profession referred to in the bible.”

There was a lot of laughter from the Bearthwaite womenfolk at that and a lot of puzzled faces from outsider women. Granny Crisp who was eighty-eight and long since widowed cackled an explanation, “None will think any the worse of you if you give it away, Lass, that’s none’s business except yours, but selling it and mekin a business of it is a whole different story.” As understanding dawned there were a lot of red faces amongst the outsider women though the Bearthwaite womenfolk just smiled. Only someone like granny Crisp could have got away with saying that in public, someone with enough status to be called Granny by the entire Bearthwaite community because she’d turned eighty and was highly respected by all her neighbours and well loved by all the Bearthwaite children. Even Aggie who was only a few months away from turning eighty wouldn’t have risked it, though there were any number of her younger peers who wondered just how far she’d go once she’d celebrated her next birthday and started to be known as Granny Carleton.

Daphne slowed as she resumed, “This is where things become difficult. Nursing was something that was becoming more and more pressurised every month that went by, and I’d been becoming progressive more tired by the shift. I’d been wondering for a while if I could ever turn my side activity of illustrating things with my paintings and model making, which added useful amounts of money to my income, into a full time living and walk away from nursing altogether. God knows what it’s like now for all the nurses I know say it’s become much worse. Since the age of ten I’d had an impressive bosom, well it certainly impressed the boys at school and then Stephen who’d had a much closer look at it than those boys, and I’d enjoyed that. I was a thirty-six E in those days, and when the bombshell landed I was a few weeks short of turning twenty-nine. Ever since a talk and slide show given by a woman from the local hospital for the girls at school I’d checked my breasts thoroughly every month.

“One month I noticed what I thought to be a tiny hard lump in my right breast. After checking the lump and the rest of my breasts too for himself my doctor made a phone call whilst I was there and had me booked in for a mammogram within the week. It turned out that I had aggressive cancer in both breasts that hadn’t produced any thing palpable other than that one tiny lump. The screening shewed that there was no chance of me surviving anything other than bilateral radical mastectomy with serious radiotherapy followed by chemotherapy afterwards for at least eighteen months. Ten days later my breasts were history. Nursing is a job that pays you even when you are ill and I was paid for a couple of years, but it was obvious that I’d never be able to return to my job. I was treated well by the hospital, but eventually it was seek a job in another line of work or try to turn what had been a hobby into a living. As some of you are aware I became very successful as a concept designer for the film industry.”

There were dozens of deeply shocked faces around the room. “I’ve never told this story to anyone before, but the reason I continued when given the opportunity to stop was that I think I need to tell someone because it’s a heavy load to carry on your own. I was a young married woman. I’d wanted a family and I’d wanted to nurse my babies myself, and I’d lost that. Changing to something else for a minute for reasons that will become apparent. Stephen doesn’t seem that clever when you first meet him, but he is constantly underestimated. He says it’s a gift from the gods in his line of work and I’ve never seen him even try to set some to rights, he prefers that they think he is stupid. Of course him being the way he is helps enormously.” Daphne seeing puzzled faces explained, “He’s a cross dresser. Right now he’ll be looking absolutely gorgeously attired in I’m not absolutely certain what, knocking back numerous pints of the locally brewed brown ale and washing it all down with heavy doses of seriously dodgy spirits whilst telling or listening to absolutely outrageous tales, jokes, lies, dirty stories no woman would want to hear, and anything else that occurs to those reprobates next door.” As she smiled the outsider women realised she was actually very fond of those reprobates next door.

Brigitte said, “When I went in there to fill the dogs’ bowls, Auntie Daphne, he was wearing an off the shoulder midnight blue cocktail gown. He looked very fetching in a twenty-two stone [140Kg, 308 pounds] MMA(8) kind of a way. I presume he was telling a dirty story because he was definitely holding the floor and there was instant silence when I went in.” Daphne just nodded in thanks knowing the frock Brigitte had referred to, but focussing on what to say next.

“What line of work is he in?” asked a visitor none had ever seen before.

“Personal security, but for years he’s only had one client, me. For years now I’ve earnt orders of magnitude more than he does and his whole company exists in its present form just to ensure my safety. If you think that’s being a bit melodramatic, our house and my workshop were deliberately burnt down a while back, fortunately we were here and not at home at the time. We think that was probably because I’d refused to undertake some work for a political group when I’d been over in the States some months before. Despite being partially retired I still do a fair bit of work, but I only take work that I find particularly interesting. I doubt if I’ll ever find anything as interesting as the taproom again, though I have ideas to improve some aspects of a few scenes. I won’t even entertain the idea of ever going to the States again. I don’t need the money and I don’t need the hassle. Everything was totally razed down to the ground. After that we had no reason to rebuild there. All our friends were here, I’ve always felt safe here, and Bearthwaite was the only place we knew where Stephen could just be himself twenty-four seven, so we sold the site as a building plot with planning permission for more or less what was there before the fire and moved to Bearthwaite.

“The only ones who asked questions about Stephen’s clothes were some of the children, but that’s all it was, the natural inquisitiveness of kids, and that doesn’t bother Stephen at all. He and the kids get on well. They know he’s a man who wears dresses and call him Uncle Stephen, not Auntie Stephen when they knock on(9) and ask if he can come out to play. They bullied him into attending the model railway society which he now enjoys, and he takes a group of them out pigeon shooting, ferreting for coneys, or fishing regularly. Some of the boys have gone to school wearing their sisters dresses. The kids think it’s a hoot. I suspect it’s just a new game that most of them will lose interest in soon enough, and if one or two continue what of it?” The sour faced looking, skinny woman in her late twenties or early thirties looked appalled that Stephen was out in public dressed as a woman and that the men here regarded him as one of themselves. That none of the Bearthwaite women seemed surprised never mind outraged, and allowed him total access to their children and even considered his contaminating some of their boys with his perversion stunned her. That Brigitte clearly regarded the situation as acceptably normal clearly deeply offended her, but wisely she said nothing unaware that Gladys, and a number of other local women too, had been reading her face like an open book as Daphne had been talking.

“As I was saying Stephen is far more clever than folk give him credit for, and he encourages that. When I met him he’d been paying for top of the range health care insurance cover for years. Since he’d turned eighteen. Once he’d left school he started work in security and had studied a correspondence criminology and law degree with the Open University. His insurance cover was very expensive because of the line of work he was in. He’d always said that if he got killed at work that wouldn’t be a problem to him and he joked that he was worth an awful lot more dead than alive. He’d admitted to me that what would be a problem to him would be if he were injured so badly he couldn’t work and that was what he paid the high premiums for, to ensure that no matter what happened he could live a comfortable and secure life. He never appeared to be wealthy because he didn’t flash his money about and didn’t own any of the usual status symbols a lot of folk with money owned. However, nurses have never been over paid, so by my standards in those days he earnt a fortune. When we started talking about a future together he had me included on his health cover policy, he said it was only another eight percent because nurses were considered to be in a very low risk profession.

“I had the surgery, and every thing else too, done privately all paid for by Stephen’s policy. The surgery was horrendous they removed my breasts down to my ribcage and most of whatever I had under my armpits too. It had all been explained to us before the surgery, but I’d no idea that breast tissue reach so far around the side of your chest. The sensation afterwards is awful. It’s not just surgery, it’s butchery, and it hurts a lot for a long time. If possible they had been going to have the reconstruction done at the same operation as the mastectomy. Reconstruction immediately following mastectomy is not at all unusual, but the surgeons warned me that given the seriousness of my surgery that may not prove to be possible. Apparently they rarely came across patients with such severe cancer because most patients had already died before their cancers became so advanced. They were amazed that my cancer had progressed so far and I’d not felt ill at all. The anæsthetist told the mastectomy surgeons before they had completed their work that reconstruction was not going to be possible when they’d finished so they needed to work with that in mind. She’d told the reconstruction surgeons that there was no point in scrubbing up. I was later informed she’d been concerned about my condition just from the mastectomy work and considered that there was a real chance that I may not make it through the reconstruction.

“For a long time I was on heavy doses of opiate pain killers that took away most of my connection to reality along with most, but nowhere near all, of the pain. They’d told me in advance that if necessary they would remove my nipples and areolae and graft them into a blood supply, so that if it were some time before I underwent reconstruction surgery they could give me my own nipples back. I was informed that another option that was widely used was tattooed nipples and areolae which apparently were very realistic looking. Months later I saw photographs of some done that way because the woman’s nipples were not salvageable, and I’d had to look closely to tell the difference. That sounds horrible doesn’t it, but I don’t know of a better way to put it. At the time I wasn’t overly impressed by any of that, not even the idea of having my own returned to me. I’d never considered having a tattoo and the idea of tattoos on my breasts seemed revolting and disgustingly lower class. If that makes me a snob then okay I’m a snob, but at least I’m a snob with no tattoos on my breasts. However, eventually I was extremely grateful to have my own returned in appropriate positions on my reconstructed bosom. I’d been a big girl with a husband who’d appreciated that and I suffered from serious depression because I was as flat chested as a prepubescent nine year old for over six months, which made me feel that I was cheating Stephen somehow.

“All that time I was undergoing regular radiotherapy immediately followed by regular chemotherapy and that is truly grim. The drugs they use have to be powerful enough to sort out any residual cancer cells, and those drugs are all extremely toxic. You can only take them for so long or they would kill you by having a go at non cancerous cells too. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was also undergoing withdrawal from the painkillers which are addictive. When you come off the chemotherapy drugs they have to give you other drugs that are merely less toxic to counteract the very toxic ones. Then you need other drugs to counteract those, and all the time I felt nauseous. I couldn’t keep any food down at all and had to be drip fed. The only good thing, or perhaps I should say the least bad thing, was I didn’t lose all my hair due to the chemotherapy. They put what looked like a shower cap on my head but some how they put ice cubes in it. They constantly replaced the ice to keep my scalp cool because that’s what preserves your hair follicles. I did lose some hair but I didn’t go anywhere near bald. Afterwards my hair did grow back but it wasn’t as thick as it had been.

“Eventually the treatments became less severe, or at least they didn’t make me throw food up all the time, but I had to relearn how to eat and my stomach and digestive tract had to learn how to process food again. I’m not going to tell you much about that but it involved numerous embarrassing incidents where I just didn’t make it to a loo and I just seemed to have nothing but disgusting liquid in my guts because my body had to learn how to absorb water out of whatever it was processing. I was still suffering from depression, but that was no wonder looking back. Throughout the entire process Stephen was wonderful. At the time he didn’t really understand how much his constant presence meant to me. I remember the day the reconstruction surgeon and his team first came to visit. He spent half an hour getting to know me and said that though he was no psychiatrist he was certain that my depression wouldn’t be as bad once I had some of my figure back. He said he had another patient to see, but he would leave me with a couple of the ladies on his team and what he referred to as his little book of samples. In any other setting that book would be described as pornography. Little and Large, the two ladies, were probably a thirty-two A and a forty E if not a forty F. They opened the book to shew me what could be done for me as regards reconstructing my breasts. They explained the implications in terms of potential future sag and what types of bras would work best with which surgery options.

“I have to say those ladies knew their breasts, and bras too. I found out later that both were fully qualified reconstruction surgeons who did nothing else. They worked with the main surgeon from choice because they both agreed he was the best and they wanted to learn as much as possible from him before forming their own teams in a few years. Little said to me at one point, ‘You don’t seem to be very happy about this, Daphne. Is there anything you would like to ask that may aid you to make your mind up as to exactly what you wish to have done?’ I said I wanted to discuss things with Stephen and I wanted to know if he could look at the photographs in the book whilst they explained options to him too because I didn’t wish to decide anything without his agreement. Large said, ‘Of course.’ She blushed and admitted, ‘I wouldn’t dream of having anything done to mine without involving my old man.’ Little added, ‘I haven’t got as much to talk about, but my old man loves me just as I am, so I wouldn’t dare change anything.’

“The following day we went through the whole process again, but with Stephen there. Stephen is no shrinking violet and some of the questions he asked were very pointed and I think Little and Large were very surprised that he was prepared to talk about breasts in that way with three women and a book that contained nothing but highly detailed, close up pictures of breasts. However, I have to say we were both impressed by their professionalism and the way they answered every detail of his questions. As a result of Stephen’s questions we both had a considerably more detailed understanding of the issues involved. The ladies left the book of photographs with us to discuss, but Stephen pushed it to one side and asked me what I wanted from him. I thought long and hard and said that from my point of view my major asset was gone for good because I’d never be able to nurse a baby, so whatever bosom I regained would purely serve to assist my view of myself as a woman which included bedtime fun. I didn’t object to that because at least I was likely to be alive for a goodly while and I would enjoy it. I added at least I would look like a woman with boobs in her bra and not a pair of silicone breast forms, even if that’s what I ended up with under my skin. I asked Steven what he would prefer, because it seemed that the reconstruction team could give me whatever I preferred, and because I wanted both of us to be satisfied with the result.

“Stephen took a long time to reply but eventually he said, ‘If it’s down to me I’d prefer you reconstructed just like you were which was a thirty-six E. That’s what I had become used to. I liked you being you and that is still how I see you in my head. I know those doctors said that they would eventually sag more than a smaller cup size would, but I presume your original breasts would have eventually headed south too because that’s what happens as women age. To me that’s no big deal because I’ll be aging too. It didn’t seem clear whether the reconstructed breasts would sag sooner or worse than the originals, but if you would be happy to look like you used to I would like that. However, it’s your call, Love. You’re the one carrying the load, on your chest, literally. If it will make your life easier to sport a thirty-six A then go for it. Something you need to ask about is after having had so much tissue removed from off your chest will you still be a thirty-six chest size, because if you are now a thirty-four, a thirty-two or even a thirty maybe an E cup will look ridiculous. The fact is you or maybe that’s we still don’t have enough information yet. Mind they are probably only giving us as much at a time as they think you can process.’

“After another ten days I was wheeled into the operating theatre. Stephen looked far more worried than I felt. I’d been told that my chest size would have decreased a little may be to a thirty-five. I was measured and that turned out to be correct but I’d always been a small thirty-six so maybe I’d not lost much chest at all. The ladies brought some thirty-six band size bras with every cup size from A to F and A to F sized breast forms for me to try on in an attempt to help me to make up my mind as to what I wanted. Eventually, Stephen and I both said, ‘Bugger it, thirty-six E here we go.’ When I came out of theatre it was twenty-four hours before I had the energy to look at my chest, but there wasn’t much to see for all the dressings. A week later the dressings were removed so the team could see how I was progressing. It wasn’t the first time the dressings had been changed, but it was the first time I’d been awake enough to look at myself. They were satisfied, I was impressed and Stephen was even more impressed. I seemed to be the same size as I’d been before, but I’d never been that perky, if you know what I mean. My nipples seemed to be permanently poking outwards reaching for the horizon. Stephen said they looked like organ stops. I’d always teased him that he should have been a poet. That confirmed, to me at least, that I’d been right.

“Six weeks later I was back home. We celebrated with an positive orgy of lingerie spending and bought Stephen a new frock and some accessories too. I wasn’t out of the woods then by any means. I still had a number of chemotherapy sessions to endure, and they were every bit as bad as my first one. But eventually after five years the folk who did all the testing said that as far as they could tell I was clear. I still go back for a check up every twelve months and will be doing till I shuffle off this mortal coil.(10) I wear flat nipple shields because a tee shirt bra just isn’t man enough for the job, which does seem to be an extremely odd phrase to use in this context, but never mind, it does get the idea across. Though I have little sensation in them my nipples are still permanently up as if they are erect from arousal and I am aware of them all the time. I wear the shields because I don’t want every one else to be aware of them all the time too. Stephen tells me the term used these days for nipples like mine is pokies, which I don’t think sounds very nice even if it is accurately descriptive. They and my skin are all that are left of my original breasts, and I am grateful that I’ve still got them. Whether I feel the same as before the surgery I don’t know because it’s too long ago to remember well and I’d had a lot of strange sensations, mostly unpleasant, in that area for a long time. Obviously the internal sensation must be different because the implants have no nerves and they are foreign material, not really part of me. However, their weight, the way they hang, for lack of a better expression, I can feel via my skin and on my rib cage too and I suspect those sensations if not identical to what I felt before must be very similar.

“I was a big girl and I’m still a big girl. Stephen is a man who has always enjoyed me being a big girl and he still does. We have always been grateful that I still have some sensation in my nipples. I decided a long time ago that in the interests of reducing potential sag it would be a good idea to wear a bra in bed. They are not the same as what I wear during the day but they prevent my skin from stretching due to the weight of my breasts. Stephen refers to them as my anti gravity holsters. Some of my friends consider his levity about my experiences to be appallingly unkind. I don’t. I know of some women whose husbands totally ignore their experiences which I couldn’t live with. I’ve come across women whose husbands left them in some cases a year or two after their reconstruction work had completely healed. At least Stephen accepts me exactly as I am, damaged by fate and repaired by luck. These days the only time I don’t wear a bra is when I need Stephen’s reassurance that I’m still a proper woman. I don’t think that lack of self confidence will ever leave me. Other women who have had mastectomies have told me the same.

“As regards Bearthwaite being able to run it’s own screening programme, absolutely yes. Regarding training men as mammographers. The surgeon who performed my mastectomy was a man and he did a first class job. That’s what the reconstruction team told me, apparently it’s not easy to do such a severe removal and leave things perfect and ready for the reconstruction team to continue from months later. The team that reconstructed my bosom did an absolutely fabulous piece of work. I think so, but don’t take my word for it ask Stephen. Like most women before my mastectomy one of my breasts was slightly larger than the other and they were ever so slightly asymmetrically positioned. Well they aren’t now. They’re exactly the same size and perfectly symmetrical. Even my nipples and their areolae, which always were perfectly circular with sharply defined edges, are perfectly centred and totally symmetrically positioned. Just thinking about what was done for me with my breasts by men and then considering the idea that men should be prevented from screening breasts just because they are men is just too ridiculous for words. Those men who worked on me were caring, skilled and highly professional. I just can’t see why a mammographer would be any different because he were a man.

“I have never had any genetic family that I know about, so I didn’t know what lay in my background regards genetic risk of breast cancer or anything else either. I’ve been told that the type of cancer I had is rare, for which women as a whole ought to be exceedingly grateful, and it’s even rarer for women to have breast cancer of any type at the age it must have started in me. Anything that can prevent or ameliorate that for other women has got to be worth chasing. No one should have to go through what I went through if it can be avoided because it is absolutely horrendous, and think on I had it easy because I had Stephen, and his policy meant I wasn’t reliant on what the NHS would have been prepared to offer me. Just how typical my experience was I don’t know. I imagine it to be an intensely personal thing and unique to every woman who is unfortunate enough to need that kind of surgery, but I can’t see that it would ever or even could ever be much better for anyone.”

Gladys had always been aware that Daphne and Stephen had an unusual relationship, but after hearing Daphne’s tale she became aware it was far more complex and much deeper than she’d previously considered it to be. Over the years the support that they’d provided each other with was truly remarkable.

Aggie nodded and very respectfully and compassionately asked with no trace of voyeurism in her voice, “Was that why you decided not to have a family, Lass? Not being able to nurse your babbies yourself I mean?”

“No, Aggie. That was due to another issue. Not exactly a medical one, though it was another genetic one, kind of. I hadn’t intended to disclose this, not because I was embarrassed by it, but rather because I didn’t want to take up so much of everyone’s time, but I don’t suppose it makes any difference really. When I stopped taking contraception, I’d been on the pill, we naturally enough thought I’d be pregnant relatively soon. The cancer treatment folk had told us that my cancer history shouldn’t have any effect on my ability to conceive, and since the blood tests shewed that all the drugs were then well and truly out of my system there couldn’t be any ill effects on my baby. After twelve months of me failing to conceive we made some enquiries. After eighteen months the clinic we were attending tested Stephen’s semen. The result of that was that he had plenty of active sperm and they doubted that the problem was there. Then I was up for testing. That produced a very rapid result that killed all hopes of me having a baby stone dead.

“I have AIS, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. To those who don’t understand what that is I was conceived as a result of my mother’s X chromosomal egg being fertilised by my father’s Y chromosomal sperm which means I should have developed as a male. Some one in twenty thousand to one in sixty-four thousand, the exact number depends on which text you read, male fœti are insensitive to the male androgen hormones they need in order to develop as a male. The default is female, so I developed as a female, to look at anyway.”

“What’s a fœti, Auntie Daphne?” quietly asked ten year old Alaya who was sitting next to Aliesha her mum.

“It’s the proper plural of fœtus, Alaya Love.” It was clear from the faces around the room that any number of the women hadn’t realised that but hadn’t wished to ask. Daphne continued, “Many of such fœti are relatively easy to spot by experts as newborns, but not all, and I was not. As I said to all outward appearances I am female, but every cell in my body is XY not XX and I don’t have the internal parts required for pregnancy. I’ll add, that not long after discovering I had AIS the hospital wrote to me asking me to attend a genetics appointment. The surgical team routinely pass samples on to the geneticists, I remembered signing giving my permission for that separately from the surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy permission forms. Stephen and I went wondering what it was all about, though we thought it was something to do with my AIS. It wasn’t. It seems that the cancer I had was a kind that with or without the AIS I would have developed breast cancer, even had I developed as a male.

“Had I developed normally as a male not only would I have been affected half of my children both daughters and sons would have developed the cancer too. And even had I been a typical XX female with the chromosome that provided the cancer half of all my children, again both sons and daughters, as well as myself, would have developed the cancer too. At that point we were both really grateful I had AIS. Since moving here we have decided to put our names down to adopt some of the street children. It just a matter of time now. However, I’ll say it again. The sooner Bearthwaite develops its own breast screening programme the better.”

There was a long silence and Abbey one of the Bearthwaite family doctors asked quietly, “I take it the condition is due to a dominant gene on an autosome, a non sex chromosome that is?” Daphne just nodded. “That is a heavy burden to carry, Daphne. If there is ever anything any of us, and by us I mean we Bearthwaite women of which you are one, can ever do to help, all you have to do is ask.”

Daphne smiled and said, “I’ve no intention of letting any of the fates grind me down. Stephen uses a much cruder Latin expression than that.(11) The only thing I want is a family. I may have no functioning breasts able to lactate any more, no uterus and no cervix, but that’s no reason to preclude me becoming a mum. I’ll not be the first mum in this situation and Bearthwaite is the best place for it to become possible that I know of. Stephen is already thinking in terms of a bigger house and kids’ bedrooms.”

Brigitte broke the silence by asking, “You want another of those punches, Daphne?”

Daphne replied, “Thank you, Brigitte, but just a single rum this time please and it’ll be my last.”

As Brigitte placed the glass in front of Daphne she said quietly, “On the house,” to see her mum and grandmother smiling in approval at her action.

~Bearthwaite’s Womenfolk’s Femininity~

Days later when discussing the outsider woman with Ellen and a few others of their age group, Aggie said, “Gladys telt me that she was on her own. She arrived by taxi, didn’t stay the night and left using the same taxi firm. The driver went into the bestside to fetch her out, and before Gladys could ask who he was after he recognised the lass. Just the idea o’ Stephen wearing a cocktail gown seriously upset her didn’t it, and as for us being amused by some o’ the young lads wearing frocks te school for a laugh that nearly pushed her ower the edge. God alone knows why she came to the Dragon at all, even Gladys couldn’t work that out, and you know how good she is at reading folk. Fact is we’re known throughout the county, not always approvingly, for our tolerance and the number o’ LGBT+ folk here, and they probably know about the cross dressers too by now. Alice asked me if I thought she was playing for the other team,(12) but I couldn’t see there being owt in that. Just think of the lasses here that are in te lasses. Even the ones as act a bit on the mannish side wouldn’t be seen dead in trousers or in the taproom. They all gossip wi’ us in the best side, but more to the point they all dress nicely and tek care o’ the way they look, by any ways o’ rekonin(13) it they’re beyond doubt lasses, and the trans lads are just like all the other lads. Even the likes o’ Juliet and Robina as have to wear men’s overalls due to their work don’t like it and lose ’em at the first opportunity yance they get home after work.

“Nay, I reckon she was disgusted by owt to do wi’ that sort o’ thing. I reckon she hated, or may be despised is a better word, hersel and any reminder she was actually female. She covered her bosom up in a frock that looked more like a sack, but it did the job and kept ’em well hid. I reckon she’d be fair mortified by her monthlies every month, which is nowt but daftness. They’re just part o’ being a lass, part o’ becoming a mum, not to mention part of being some man’s woman which is necessary if you want to be a mum, and lets be honest it’s a fair enjoyable way to pass an evening in bed for a couple o’ any age too. Nay, sexless, that what I reckon is the best word to describe her. I’d put a fair bit on it that she’s never bin te a breast screening appointment and I reckon she’d rather die than see a gynæ even if it were a lass. Happen she may just die at that, for there’re more than enough things as can tek a lass’ life away early that are easy dealt wi’ by being sensible about seeing the right folk at the right time. Any lass as doesn’t have her breasts screened and her cervical smears done when telt by her doctor it’s time is being a fool to hersel, and worse the grief she’ll inflict on them as love her is an act o’ wilful wickedness.

“Any roads, I doubt she’s owt to worry about as regards any man handling owt at all o’ her body ne’er mind her breasts. Let’s be honest she didn’t have much to shew for hersel did she? Ailis one o’ my great granddaughters is twelve with more to shew for hersel than she had, mind my lass shews ’em off te advantage te mek sure that Huw that young lad o’ hers keeps his eyes firmly riveted on hers and don’ stray te fix on those o’ some other lass. Up te now she’s bin mekin a good job of it. Mind lasses learn gey fast, especially regards lads, at that age. I reckon the contents o’ yon outsider lass’ knickers are absolutely safe from any kind o’ invasion, that ’ld be too much effort for too little reward, so I can’t see any o’ our menfolk wanting te ga(14) there.” Aggie chuckled, a coarse lewd chuckle, and added, “Least not if they had te look at her face, and I can’t see her being up for owt else especially owt involving the settle(15) back.” After choking with laughter at Aggie’s final assessment of the woman, eventually the conversation moved on to other matters, yet the women kept laughing from time to time as Aggie’s dirty minded words resurfaced in their minds. She may well have appeared to most outsiders, especially men, most of the time, to be as straight laced as her great grand daughters did in their presence, but for certain she was a Bearthwaite lass with a Bearthwaite lass’ feisty appreciation of her sense of her own reality. Bearthwaite women were all the same, but few outsiders ever saw any trace of that side of most of the Bearthwaite’s womenfolk’s femininity.

~HiSense Equals NoSense~

Asher was an outsider who like Saul had a crew that did demolition and site clearance work. He was well known and worked with Saul from time to time, especially when either of them had a big job on that needed doing quickly and time was short. “I thought I’d tell you the rest of my tale about buying that new cooker with the induction hob. Bottom line was it was fucked and the paperwork was such as I couldn’t get it replaced or my money back under warranty, so I did some instant stress relief and mentally wrote the bastard off losing six hundred and fifty less a quid. The hard bit of the job was calming Esther down, that cost me a bottle of decent brandy. Fortunately I alus(16) has one stashed away ready for sech(17) emergencies. I bought a new halogen hob cooker from a reputable spot in Penrith. Seems they aren’t as historic as I thought. Pass me some chemic someone, preferably somat as is at least marginally toxic.” After taking a draught of some pale green beverage that poured with a viscosity noticeably lower than water Asher continued, “Starting back at the beginning, I bought the Hisense cooker from Mark’s Electrical (0116 251 5515) via Ebay. First the oven went down and the digital display too. It wasn’t constant and the fault came and went.

“I had numbers to ring for a warrantee claim, 03330 436 697 and 0191 387 0804. I had all I needed to identify a genuine sale and a valid warrantee claim. Appliance serial number 322 AO132. The data I had from the supplier was Ac 1221298, Payment date 20/09/2023, Schedule date 19/09/2023, and order number 08-10559-19218. There was no possibility that I had not paid for a defective appliance that had failed within the warrantee period. However, I got nowhere with any of it and decided to see if I could get someone to look at it. I found someone, Kwabena Electrical Repair. Turns out he’s on the far side of the county from me, but fair play to him the lad turned up. I’ve no idea where his family originated but he and his accent were from dahn sarf.(18) Kwabena knew his stuff all right and the only fault he managed to find was that the quick way to set the timer on the digital front panel didn’t work, but there was a work around that just took a few more button presses.

“I paid the lad sixty pun(19) and assumed all was well. A couple of days later the front panel went dead and so did the two ovens. Again the problem was intermittent. For a while if I turned the cooker off at the mains left it a few seconds before turning it back on again it worked again, problem was I couldn’t use it because as soon as I turned my back on the bastard it went off again. I managed to get hold of HiSense. A bloke came round on behalf o’ the manufacturer, or more likely the importer, and he said there was nowt wrang wi’ it. I checked whilst he was there and it was indeed working. That cost me ninety-five pun and he’d not bine gone an hour when it went off again. I rang the appropriate numbers and was telt that unless I had a picture of the receipt of sale to send them there was nowt they could do. I didn’t and the eBay record wasn’t there, which struck me as gey odd. In the mean time as often as not the hobs didn’t work. I rang Kwabena again. This time he started to take it apart. I knew it wasn’t good by his indrawn breath. He looked at it and said it was nowt like the one in the book of words that came with it, there were bits missing and it looked like someone who’d had no idea what they were doing had buggered about wi’ it wi’ out putting it back together properly. He shewed me the hob wasn’t even screwed down to the frame.

“Given that the damned thing had already cost me eight hundred and sixty-four pun and what the warrantee folk were saying he advised me to write it off and buy something from a small place that valued my custom. He suggested a small place in Penrith which was where I eventually bought the halogen from. Keabena delivered and installed it for me, another sixty quid up, to nine hundred and twenty-four pun Eventually things began to become a little clearer in my mind and I realised that despite using eBay my credit card had been used to pay for the induction cooker. I rang the credit card folk and sent copies of everything including copies of the two technician visits and their reports on what they’d found. I got my money back, including paying for the two technicians that had been to the house, and the credit card folk recovered their money from the folk who’d just buggered me off. Visa clearly had a lot more clout than I did. I even received twenty quid to dispose of the cooker under the WEEE(20) legislation.

“Funny thing about that Kwabena lad, we had a few interesting chats whilst he was at my spot, a lot of you lads know what I mean by interesting chat, STEM kind o’ chats. To them as don’t knaw that’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He was pretty well educated, well he was for a southerner. I can’t help mysel I just associate accents like those with not exactly stupidity, but folk as don’t knaw owt about owt as matters. To be honest I associate the flat vowel sounds of Yorkshirefolk that way too. I do my best to not let it affect my judgement but that how it is or maybe I should say that’s how I am. Anyway I’m drifting of my topic. Fact was I thought he was bright, well read and STEM literate, a decent impressive kind of a bloke. The day he’d stripped the cooker we were tekin a brew whilst I had a think about what I was gaïn te do wi the damned thing before he reassembled it.

“I admit I was pissed off, but that’s no real excuse. I made some remark about the will o’ god deliberately fucking me up wi the cooker and how all stupid bastards wi’ religion should be chopped up for firewood for me to cook on. You knaw how it gas.(21) You’ve heard those kinds o’ comments thousands o’ times in here from any number of us. Well a bit later he quietly admitted to having a serious dose o’ religion. I didn’t ask what flavour he’d got because I didn’t care. To me they’re all a mark o’ fucking insanity. I was gobsmacked because I just don’t expect that kind o’ stupidity from the STEM literate. We had a chat about it and I was gey polite about it. He asked me why I thought that way. That an impossible question to answer meaningfully to any o’ ’em who’ve got that kind o’ psychosis. I went easy on him, I telt him in my word faith was just another word for unsubstantiated bullshit because my world ran on evidence and the Romans were one of the best record keepers the world has ever seen.

“We know Pontius Pilot was recalled to Rome and executed we have comprehensive trade records for Judea, but there is not a single contemporary record mentioning Jesus nor of any other character by a different name remotely like him. The earliest records were written centuries after his purported death. I challenged him to find me yan, telling him I’d offered clergymen and biblical scholars the same challenge and they’d all failed. Any roads, it all ended friendly enough, but he left me a book te read. You knaw the kind o’ book I mean you can tell from the loaded questions on the back cover it’s a complete load o’ shite just lying in ambush to steal at least an hour o’ your life off you whilst you flick through it. I lied and said I’d give it a ga knowing damned fine would I hell as like waste any seconds, ne’re mind an hour, o’ my precious remaining life on it. I’m still amazed a bloke as clever as he obviously was would waste his life on shite like that. The cooker was a HiSense but that was a NoSense.

“What did you do wi’ the book, Asher?” asked one of the young lads in curiosity.

“I did the only thing it’s sensible te do wi’ shite like that. I had the heat out o’ it,(22) Son. The best of it is I took the cooker to Bertie, and his lads fettled it properly wi’ spares from a similar model and selt it for me for five hundred quid with a twelve month warrantee. I telt him to spend the money on tools for some o’ the young lads struggling to buy their own. That med Esther feel considerably better about the whole sorry mess. I should explain that I am not what others would call a wealthy man, but I’m doing okay and the money involved to me was not a significant amount, at least losing it upset me a great deal less than the feeling of being ripped off had done. However, it is my belief that those of us who can afford to bring such brigands to account have a moral obligation to do so in order that those without such ability are protected from predators who contribute nothing to society and diminish the ability of those they parasitise to contribute in order to enable their undeservèd power to be enhanced. I should perhaps add that the ordinary folk vastly outnumber the folk that parasitise them and though their individual power be small their collective power is capable of destroying any corporation, and I see myself as one of their unelected leaders.” All the Bearthwaite men knew Asher well and him donating the five hundred pounds to assist young engineers in need of their own tools was no surprise to any of them, and murmurs of approval went around the tap room.

~Dancing Spanners~

Hudson Wake was a born and bred local, a retired bricklayer and had turned eighty-five the previous month. He’d been an active man with a lively sense of the ridiculous. He used to be a regular contributor in the Green Dragon taproom in the main telling amusing tales of the ridiculous things that happened on building sites, but he had stopped attending after his wife Nya died three years before. It was only three months ago since he had returned to face the world again and till tonight he’d been silent, a shadow of his former self, so it was a surprise to the local men when he’d suddenly announced into a silent pause in the conversation, “In my younger days I used to have eyes like a shit house rat.(23) These days I’ve got macular degeneration which I found out the hard way the other day can cause visual hallucinations. I was gobsmacked when I saw a cluster of dancing spanners in the middle of my bathroom floor. I’d left ’em there because I was half way through replacing the filler and flush mechanism in the cistern o’ the close coupled crapper.(24) I’d only done half the job because the carpel tunnel in my right hand had started playing up.

“I’d gan for a coffee and a hand break and when I returned to finish the job I saw the spanners, which are a one of those six mill to twenty-eight mil sets o’ combination spanners(25) that fit in a plastic organiser cowie,(26) waving about and bending. The bugger of it was I’d not even taken a drink. Later that evening I saw the stainless steel handle on the glass door of the solid fuel stove in the front room bending backwards and forwards. I looked it up on the internet which was when I discovered there’s a well known connection between loss of vision and hallucinations, and macular degeneration is a common, if not actually popular, cause of hallucinations. The following day I rang the lass as does my eyes and she said there was nowt that could be done about it, but it wasn’t owt to worry about. She never said, but I got the distinct impression she was implying that I’d be deed(27) before it became a problem. So, Alf, shape yoursel, Lad, and pass me that bottle o’ chemic whilst I’m still here to enjoy it.” There were roars of laughter at that especially from the older men who all topped up their glasses with some of the rare stuff too. “Sasha I mind you saying something about eyesight a lang while since. You any idea what’s gan(28) on in such a way as I can get my heed(29) around it?”

“Aye, but it’s only an explanation. It’s not going to help your eyesight any.”

“Tell me any roads. At least it’ll be good for a laugh.”

“Okay. Your eyes are not responsible for your eyesight, your brain is. Your eyes are just sensors that feed signals to your brain for it to process. Your brain is damned clever, some would say too damned clever, because when it gets what it reckons are dodgy or incomplete signals it tries to help out by improving what it reckons is dodgy and if necessary by creating what it reckons is missing. There’s a part of the eye called the macula that provides a significant portion of the signal that the brain receives from each working eye. All that is agreed on by all experts. The exact details of the rest depend upon which expert’s opinion you’re reading. I’ll go with the ones that agree with my general understanding of how the brain interprets signals from all its sensors, to wit eyes, ears, nose, taste buds and skin, which provide signals for what we understand as the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. You have some macular degeneration so presumably a small part or parts of your macula or both your maculae doesn’t or don’t send a good enough signal to your brain, so it does its best to create a decent signal.

“Now when you walked into your bathroom your head wouldn’t have been still, so at one instant let’s say a bit of the spanners’ image was missing and your brain created the missing bit from what it perceived either side of the missing bit. That process is so fast as to be perceived by you as to be instantaneous. However, a tiny fraction of a second later your head and so your eyes had moved and so the missing bit of the image had moved even if it were only by a tiny amount, so your brain created the missing bit in a slightly different place. The result of that process occurring so rapidly and repeatedly as to appear to you to be a continuous process is that the spanners appeared to be dancing. However, I have heard of folk who perceive what can only be described as total hallucinations that have nothing to do with the environment they are in. Undoubtedly the brain is creating them, where from is any one’s guess. Possibly from memories, recent and accurate or possibly from much older memories that had degraded and lost detail over the years, maybe even from pure imagination.

“It’s called Charles Bonnet Syndrome and is named after the man who described the condition in his grandfather in 1760.(30) He suffered from the condition himself in his later years. Examples of what some folk can see are imaginary or fantasy animals which has included fictional creatures like dragons, unicorns, creatures from comics or monsters from films. Nature scenes like waterfalls, trees, mountains, bugs or park scenes are common. Persons or animal familiar to the hallucinator are well known, they can be faces of loved ones, coworkers or neighbours from their past or present. Some people see pets or other animals. Some have seen repeated patterns like brick walls, netting, a web or another grid like pattern that repeats the same shape and lines. Fact is almost owt is possible. I don’t suppose that helps, but look on the bright side dancing spanners aren’t too bad, as long as you don’t ask, ‘Are ye dancing?’ because you’d get a hell of a shock if they replied,’ Are ye asking?’(31) Though I suppose trying to open your fire door to put some more fuel on when the handle keeps moving would be a pain in the arse.”

After the chuckling had faded, Bruce Younghusband took up the tale telling, “Going back to talking o’ vermin, and I’m on about the real deal, shit house rats and the like, not politicians and their like though they’re nay better. My greenhouse has a concrete floor and I noticed a pile o’ lose soil in the corner last week. It was coming from the hole where the twenty-five mil, blue, MDPE(32) water pipe enters via a one ten mil piece of soil pipe that I used as a shutter to keep the concrete off the water pipe when we laid it. Her indoors said we’d had the squirrels in the greenhouse after her bulbs, so she suggested maybe it was them. I wasn’t convinced and the day after I spotted the rat hole in the cold frame just outside that corner of the greenhouse when I was planting early onion sets. I’ll have to do something because I don’t want the bastards chewing through the water pipe because it’s going on four foot down. Bastards must a gone two feet down to get under the footings that the greenhouse dwarf wall sits on, god alone knows why. On a less serious matter, I’ve been bricking up some redundant auld cavity ventilation bricks a back o’ the house against mice. The little buggers come in for a warm during the calt weather. That’s none se bad, but the bloody cats trash the spot chessing(33) after ’em and Annalísa gas(34) mental at the mess they mek. I can live wi’ the mice. I can even live wi’ the bloody cats, but there’s nay living wi’ Annalísa gan radge(35) because naturally it’s all my fault.”

Once the laughter had subsided, which took a couple of minutes, Alf said, “I’ve got a hundred weight [50Kg, 112 pounds] o’ poisoned grain specially formulated for rats rather than mice. Shoveling a few ounces in each side of the hole in your greenhouse floor should sort the fuckers out. It’s gey strang, so I always wear disposable gloves to handle it, burn ’em as soon as I’ve done wi’ ’em and even then tek care te wash my hands gey well. I’ll bring some round tomorrow if you like, Bruce.”

“I’d appreciate it, Alf. Thanks.”

~The Thirty-Two Thousand Quid Smile~

“I see you’ve finally got your teeth in, Sasha. Must say you look good, best set o’ false teeth I’ve ever laid eyes on. They actually look real. It’s teken what, a couple o’ years?”

“Three, Turk. Three year gone back end of last November I had the top ones out. The lowers ones were out middle of January the following year. I’ve told you all before I’m a procrastinator, and the Procrastinator’s Creed is never put off doing something till tomorrow if you can put off doing it till the day after.”

“What did it all come to when all was said and done?”

“I admit that they did a damned good job, but from my point of view it was no ride in the park. It hurt and from time to time it hurt a lot for a bloody long time. I have a source of gey powerful painkillers that I’ve hardly ever used because they’re addictive and on the controlled drugs list, but needs must when the devil drives and he was driving me mental with the pain. The day of the implants there was a bloody squad of them in with me, the dental nurse and the dentist, who I discovered is actually a doctor, an orthodontic surgeon is the right term I think. The five others were two blokes from the dental lab in London, a professor of orthodontics and her side kick who was a senior lecturer. The fifth I later discovered was a lass who was an consultant anæsthetist in case I needed knocking out. The bottom line all in was thirty-two thousand quid which is a hell of a price for a smile, still it keeps Elle happy.” There was a long silence with in drawn breaths and soft whistles, “I give you all more details sometime when I feel up to remembering it all. Right now I’m focussing on forgetting it as fast as I can and that bottle of sump oil is helping a treat so either pass it over or fill my glass up for me, Stan.” Stan grinned as he filled Sasha’s glass with something that indeed looked as black as sump oil but poured as slowly as treacle on cold day.

~Packaging~

Saul started by saying, “I can’t put this rant off any longer, Lads, so you’ll just have to put up wi’ me. I’m sick, weary and tired o’ all the ridiculous packaging that you get all kinds o’ stuff in these days. Sometimes the damned packaging weighs more than the goods it’s wrapping. Stuff comes wrapped in yards and yards o’ shrink wrap, equal lengths o’ bubble wrap, all stuck together wi’ yards o’ packaging tape wi’ nylon threads in it that cut your hands te shreds if like me you’re stupid enough to try to tear it wi’ your hands. Stuff arrives in heat sealed envelopes made o’ cross linked polythene that wi’ out a sharp blade o’ some sort there’s nay way o’ oppnin(36) ’em. A dozen stickers on my six pack o’ new, winter, boot socks and fifty-odd stickers on the her indoors’(37) twelve pack o’ new knickers, which naturally I had te remove, and they all stick like shit to a blanket. Plastic tag thingies piercing your clothes, shoes and owt else they can think of, and that’s with out even talking about stuff wi’ childproof safety oppners(38) that if you’re ower sixty and have hands knackered from any o’ half a dozen different conditions you have to get one of the grand kids te oppen(39) for you. Even my six year old lass can oppen ’em better than I can. As for the five litre plastic bottle o’ Roundup weed killer, I used to have te wait till William my grandson came round te oppen it for me. Eight he was when he first started oppnin the bastards for me. They’re no se bad these days because I cut the teeth off the inside o’ the cap now.

“Why can’t they use decent packaging that you don’t need a fully equipped workshop to break into? I usually oppen stuff on the big chest freeze by the door after the post arrives. As often as not the spot looks like a bloody crime scene complete wi’ the necessary blood for authenticity. I suppose I could cope wi’ it all other than the child proof tops on the pill bottles because I always have a pocket knife on me, though I have teken pill bottles into the workshop te grip ’em in a vice and trash the tops off ’em wi’ a babby Stillson.(40) What meks me mad is when they wind her indoors up and then she has a go at me when she’s crying in frustration because she’s hurt hersel trying te oppen sumat. Then they’ve gone too bloody far. I coped wi’ Bella in her broomstick days(41) and when she got even worse due to the change(42) too, and I can cope wi’ her swearing at me or even being totally ignored by her for days, but I draw the line at being scriked at.(43) And as for bog rolls, Dave had the right of it months ago back when he talked about bog roll as narrow as bus tickets. I bought a pack o’ twelve from a shop somewhere not that long ago. It was described as quilted, soft, high quality toilet paper. High quality my arse if you’ll pardon the pun. It was an inch narrower than any I’d ever seen afore, the paper was as rough as a bear’s arse, pun intended, and it certainly wasn’t what any would recognise as quilted. Renova it was called. It was nothing like that decent stuff as Dave stocks, that Cusheen tackle.

“Why were you buying it from a shop, Saul, and not from Dave,” Frank asked sounding puzzled.

“We were working away and had nearly run out. What are you supposed to do when you’ve a team o’ nine lads and you’re down to the last roll? There’s nay way I’m gan back to the days when we ripped squares of auld newspaper off a wad as had been nailt aback o’ the outside shit house door, Lad.”

~High Gibbet, Soft on the Stick & Salt on the Lidd~

Vincent indicated a desire to speak, so Pete said, “Give us a few minutes, Vincent. I’ll pull a few pints and we can pass the chemic round.” When all had been done and the dogs had been let out and were back in in the warm with their noses on the fire fenders and their eyes shut, Vincent waited till the last men returned from the back and had settled themselves down before starting. “I was thinking on some o’ Dave’s laugh worthy place names from a Saturday or two back when I was mekin some some pressed ham hock and liver pâtés. The pressed ham hock I was mekin from some o’ Gunni’s delvers’ pork hocks that I’d salted in the brine after mekin bacon ribs in it which had turned out well. It ’ld a bin last Sunday when I’d also med some goose giblet pâté from all the giblets which I cook and then rough chop, but nowt bigger than a quarter inch [6mm]. I boil the necks and then pick the meat off ’em, well the lasses as work at the back do. Whilst I was at it I med some from beast liver and kidney and the lasses boilt up the half a dozen delver heads for some brawn to mek later in the week.”

“Any good, Vincent?”

“It was all selt by Thursday closing and none has complained yet. The brawn always disappears inside twenty-four hours, it used to tek forty-eight hours for it to get round the village that I’d some in the shop. Mobile phones a cut that in half. If it’s available when we open it isn’t when we close, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference how much the lasses mek. It’s alus bin popular for lunches and bait. I reckon most of it gets et by the kids at school from out o’ their lunch boxes. Thing is I still can’t get High Giblet, Soft on the Styx and Salt on the Lidl out o’ my head even though I knaw as Dave actually said, High Gibbet, Soft on the Stick and Salt on the Lidd.

Alf asked, “I get the first yan and the last yan too, but not that Soft on the Stick yan. What did you mean there, Vincent?”

“It’s the word stick, Alf. Dave meant Soft on the Stick wi’ stick as in what you chuck for a dog te chess.(44) I’m talking about Soft on the Styx where Styx is spelt ess, tee, why, ex. The Styx is a river in the Greek underworld of Hades that is the border between the underworld and the world of the living. It’s the river the ferryman teks you across when you get to be deed and styx means hate in Greek.”

“You’ve bin areading them history books again, Vincent. I’ve telt ye afore nay guid ’ll come of it.” As Stan finished the room roared with laughter, for Vincent was known to enjoy reading ancient Greek and Roman stories, both fiction and texts that explained the way those folk had lived.

~Haag~

Tony Dearden, a local JCB and excavating machine operator said, “I saw an advertisement on Ebay the other day for what was described as a Quahog clam rake and there was nay picture. I know folk rake for shellfish including clams, but I wanted to know what a Quahog was. I wondered if it were a shellfish or some kind of a pig like Gunni Peabody’s tuskers, semi wild or feral, and if it were what was a rake used for, so I looked it up. Quahog are a kind o’ clam that live down the eastern seaboard of the Americas from Prince Edward Island down to the Yucatán Peninsula in Central America, and a Quahog clam rake is like any other shellfish rake, a bit like a short handled, small haag.(45) Whilst I was ratching(46) in the computer I looked up haag but it seems it’s a word not in use elsewhere, or at least not the way we use the word. I got one hit on a site that listed twelve kinds o’ rakes, but nowhere did it mention the word haag, so I couldn’t even work out how the site came up. Other than that, haag is something to do with a company o’ that name that does everything to do wi’ roof inspection and certification. Then I looked up Den Haag, the Dutch city that we call The Hague, to see if that explained where the term haag came from. It seems Den Haag comes from Des Graven Hage, which means the counts’ hedge and refers to the fact that Dutch noblemen once used the land for hunting. Yance ower(47) they had a hunting lodge there located in a woodland area called Haghe or hedge. Gravenhage means the counts’ private enclosure. Den is an older form of the Dutch word de meaning the. So maybe our use o’ the word haag is like the word gevlik and really does have Viking roots. For those as don’t know, what we call a haag is a long handled tool often used for clearing ditches and ponds. It is like a long handled, three or four tined garden fork with the tines bent downwards at about ninety degrees. It is used similarly to a rake to pull weeds and other debris out of the water. A gevlik is a five or six foot [1·5 -1·8m] lang, heavy pry bar. Some ’ld call it a crow bar, but that to us is a bar only about three foot [1m] lang at most.

~Looking Back to Sweet Moments~

Harriet announced, “You’re having a soup starter tonight, Gentlemen, and the little ones who helped their dads and granddads collect the ingredients from the carrot clamp and the still standing frozen coriander at the allotments telt me they’re for corrit and carionder soup, so no matter what you think of it you lie through you teeth and tell them it was wonderful. You can tell me the truth, but I’ll be seriously put out wi’ any who upsets the little ones. Is that understood‽” There were nods of agreement and murmurs of naturally.

After Harriet had left Alf almost too casually remarked, “She’s a proper Bearthwaite mum ain’t she?”

Vincent added, “Aye, and every bit as nasty as any o’ ’em when there’re kids to be protected, especially babbies.(48) Gustav did right well for hisel there didn’t he, Pete?”

To many nods all around the tap Pete replied, “Aye so he did, but the other side o’ that coin is he’s a first class dad that my lass and Bearthwaite too were lucky to keep. I’m not talking about his investments in his economic activity and the jobs he created here. I’m talking about him as a man, as a dad. I mind that evening when he got dumped here by mistake by a taxi driver from Maryport that he couldn’t understand. Not that any can understand any bugger from there.” When the laughter had died down, for all had friends from Maryport and all had often struggled to understand their dialect, which was referred to as gey strang.(49) Pete continued, “What’s that word, Sasha, for when something gey lucky just happens?”

“You mean serendipity, Pete?”

“Aye that’s it. I mind after time that evening Sasha and I talked about locking the pair o’ ’em up in an unheated bedroom wi’ a single bed and one blanket.” When the laughter had faded Pete added, “Though Gladys, that’s my missus for them as don’t know, reckoned the Cossack, which is what she calls Sasha, would a handcuffed the pair to the bed frame wi’ just enough slack to manage.”

Gustav who’d just emerged from the cellar door grinned and added, “Slack or no slack, I’m sure we’d have managed. However, it wasn’t to be. It wasn’t till I laid a drunk out for groping Harriet in the best side that I staked my claim to her.”

Amidst the chuckling Harriet said from behind the bar, “I wouldn’t have minded if it had been Gustav who’d laid his hands on me. To be honest I’d been kind of hoping he would for a week or two. I don’t doubt that many of you had equally difficult starts with your ladies. I was grateful for the way Mum and Dad helped us in the early days, and now it’s our turn to aid the next generation. That’s how it works for Bearthwaite folk, though there’s nowt wrong in having a laugh about sech years after is there? Events that were somewhat embarrassing at the time eventually become sweet moments we all look back to with fond memories. I don’t have the time to tell you about supper, give it twenty minutes and Mum or I’ll be back with a full menu description.” Harriet left in the direction of the kitchen.

“Like as I said, she’s a proper Bearthwaite mum and she’s still a real sweetie. You did yourself proud there, Gustav. Just watch out for when those lasses of yours start learning the tricks of womanhood, you’ll a nay chance.”

Pete chipped in, “It’s no good telling him now, Alf. It’s far too late. You should a telt him to run for the hills before she laid eyes on him.” The laughter took a while to settle.

~What’s for Supper?~

Harriet came back after a quarter of an hour and said, “It’s all under control in the kitchen now and I have enough time to give you the menu. As I telt you before, Gentlemen, there is creamed carrot and coriander soup courtesy of the allotment growers, though the carrots are fresh they are the last of those kept in cool storage in the clamps. In future, till we obtain some of the small early maturing ones grown under protection, we’ll be using pressure canned ones from Auntie Christine and her staff at the Bobbin Mill. The coriander was frozen still standing where it grew at the allotments. I was telt there’s a bit of that left, but that by the time I want some more it’ll be gone. There is a large amount frozen somewhere. I presume it’s at the Bobbin Mill, but it could be anywhere these days, however, Gretchen’s database will tell me where to fetch it from. All the thickening agents are from the mill and the dairy products are from the Peabody dairy. The seasonings are all local except the pepper and the salt. The salt is best Cheshire rock salt courtesy of the highways or whatever they are called these days, but the pepper has to be bought in which I suspect will always be the case, though our requirement is nothing like it was once because, we have replaced some of it with locally grown, dried and ground, mild chile peppers. The bread rolls, like the thickeners, are courtesy of the lasses as work at the bakery at Auntie Alice’s mill.

“Your chicken supreme is actually duck supreme. The duck is fresh courtesy of Mitchel Armstrong via Auntie Christine’s staff. They take all that is left after the legs and breasts have been selt to the buyers down south. They boil and strip all the remaining meat off the bones and jar it up. The liquid they reduce and add it to the jars before pressure canning the jars. We usually receive the meat in five litre jars, but we were given this batch before the canning took place. The pearl barley is grown by one of any number of our farmers and comes to us from Uncle Phil the Mill. As always the dairy products come from the Peabody dairy. The potato cubes in with the duck and the barley are Anya from Uncle Johnto, but the mashed potatoes are Uncle Alf’s Bearthwaite Queen, both via Auntie Christine at the mill. It will be a warming and substantial meal to match the weather. The herbs are all grown by our allotments folk, but I don’t know who by as I obtained them from Auntie Christine frozen in five hundred gramme [1 pound] blocks.

“The cabbage is a large, white, cow cabbage grown on a huge scale by the allotments folk because it grows well every year and because it is enjoyed by just about everyone, except some of the children of course. The allotment folk are talking about growing it on a field scale outside the valley next year in fields at relatively high altitude where the bugs are less of a problem. They will however be growing large areas of it here at the allotment site just in case despite the altitude they have bigger issues with cabbage white butterfly caterpillars outside the valley than they do here. The allotment folk tell me that the reason they have so few problems here is because they look after the birds that just love a juicy cabbage white caterpillar snack. Seems some birds enjoy the butterflies too. They also added that once the new land is looked after properly the birds will return and do there what they do here. They are not prepared to use the significant quantities of industrial pesticides that would typically be used to control the bugs by outsider farmers because they don’t wish us to eat even residual quantities of it, and to quote Uncle Alf, ‘The stuff is damned expensive.’ ” There were many smiling and laughing at that because all knew Alf’s views concerning the agrichemical companies and his views concerning industrial chemicals in his food.

Too, all knew kids who hated cooked vegetables on principle. They all grew out of it eventually, but they were a constant source of worry to their mums who were bothered that their children weren’t eating a varied enough diet. Most of the men didn’t worry about it. Many of them remembered not liking vegetables as a child and the kids all liked fruit. They couldn’t see what was wrong with a child eating an apple instead of cooked cabbage or other vegetables even if it was on the same plate as bacon, baked beans and a fried egg, or even with a full Sunday dinner instead of cooked sprouts, and in any case most of the kids ate significant quantities of raw vegetables as well as fruit provided free by Dave and Lucy’s store. Some of the more revolutionary mums were starting to provide their children with meals with their vegetables raw. That had started because it had been the only way Stephanie had been able to persuade some of the younger children she looked after to eat their vegetables with their lunch. It had worked and some of
the older children had demanded their vegetable raw too. Most were just as happy to be eating a crisp crunchy carrot as an apple. They ate raw cabbage, other leaves too, the only vegetable some were still shy of was beetroot because they didn’t like having a bright red face for days for their friends to make fun of.

“I was going to do red cabbage with apple like Gustav’s mum does it, but Auntie Christine only had some in one litre [1 US quart] jars and it just takes too long to deal with them for a Saturday night supper unless we’ve a few of the young lasses helping in the kitchens. Next year the Bobbin Mill staff will be canning up some red cabbage with the apple included in the new twenty-five litre [25 US quarts] jars for those of us who cook on that scale. The new super jars with the four inch [100mm] tops are being produced in volume by Auntie Iðunn and her staff now the issues with the lids and their seals have all been resolved. I’m telt that they are also converting a lot of the big jars that are picked up free from fast food outlets in the county where we collect used cooking oil from into Kilner jars with the four inch [100mm] super sized lids. All the new lids are being produced here too and that is providing significant employment. There is loads of extra mushroom sauce for any who want it. The mushrooms came from the allotment growers and the children collected the fungi from higher up in the valley where they usually find them. Any left over sauce we plan to turn into mushroom soup. On Monday that will disappear as bait into the thermos flasks for the farm workers and others who eat their breakfast here.

“Originally we were going to provide Bakewell tart with custard for pudding but when the weather turned cold and wet on us over last night we decided to go for something more substantial and warming. So you’re now going to be served a steamed jam roly poly pudding made with Auntie Christine’s marmalade and some of her dried fruit too rather than jam, all done to Auntie Aggie’s grandma’s receipt. As well as the custard there is a gallon of extra marmalade sauce for those who’d appreciate the extra stickiness factor. As usual all cereal products come from Auntie Alice at the mill including the cornflour in the custard milled from locally grown maize. The dried fruit is mostly locally grown and processed though some is brought up from the London wholesale market. Like the citrus fruit in the marmalade it is given to our drivers because it is close to its sell by date and the traders are glad to see it taken away without having to pay anything. The sweeteners used here are sucrose which we process from locally grown sugar beet and sometimes we use locally produced honey.

“As usual the ladies have expressed a preference for cream rather than custard, but we have prepared eight one gallon jugs of our own brand of custard for in here. For any who don’t know we don’t use vanilla flavouring, but use almond essence for flavouring instead. It’s much cheaper because we make the essence ourselves by the gallon instead of buying it in those silly little thirty-eight millilitre [ca. 1¼(US) or 1⅓(UK) fluid oz] flavouring bottles the supermarkets sell it in for ridiculous prices. Brigitte has some vanilla orchids growing in Uncle Johnto’s hothouses so may be at some time in the future we’ll be producing our own vanilla extract too. Any who would prefer cream only have to say so and I’ll bring a jug through, though it will be a smaller porcelain one because the ladies don’t like one gallon enamel jugs on the table. Lest any have doubts about our custard, it must be at the very least acceptable because Uncles Alf, Bertie and Silvester all Winstanleys with Winstanley appetites consume it by the gallon. I think that’s it. If there’s anything I’ve missed out it will be trivial and the Bearthwaite men here will be able to tell you. Before I return to the kitchen I’ll pull pints for you Dad if you like?”

When the laughter at Harriet’s comment concerning Winstanley appetites had faded Black Simon the Bearthwaite blacksmith, who was of a similar size and had a similar sized appetite to the Winstanly men, smiled and said, “I got away with that one lightly, Lass. I’ll pull the pints. You sort the supper out.”

Harriet waved as she left and Silvester who though tall and big was nowhere near the size of Alf, Bertie and Simon said, “I reckon that was said just to let me know I truly am back home, wasn’t it, Dad?”

Alf replied slowly, “Probably, Son, probably, but I’ve never bin able to work out why women do owt, nor what passes through their heeds whilst they’re doing it. I’ve known your mum for well ower seventy years and I no more understand what goes on in her mind now than I did back then when we were kids. If you ever get to understand owt any o’ ’em think you’ll have to let me in on the secret.”

For most of the outsiders that was an innocuous and humorous brief conversation between a man and his son and they took it at face value. The local men and one or two outsiders knew that Silvester had been Silvia when she’d left Bearthwaite decades ago and had not long returned as Silvester. The conversation between the recently reconciled father and son was they realised of much greater significance than it had seemed to the outsiders. It was Alf reassuring Silvester that he saw him as his son.

~Supper~

“Jesus, that was some supper, Pete. Though I don’t understand why we were served the soup and the rolls. You any idea, Lad?”

Elliot was an outsider who’d become a regular Saturday evening attender a few years back. “Aye, Elliot, they’re using us as guinea pigs for receipts that they plan on using during the next summer visitor season when the place will be heaving wi’ folk. We’re already booked up solid over the entire eight week school holiday period, despite there being a fortnight offset between the holidays of different Local Education Authorities, and we’re busy for four month besides. We’re passing as much business on to the bed and breakfast folk as could do wi’ it, some of them have decided to do bed and full board which is proving to be popular. The kids ower the border in Scotland get six weeks starting at the beginning o’ July and ga back te school in the middle o’ August. Kids this side in England get six weeks starting half way into July and ga back te school at the beginning o’ September. Our own kids do Saturdays and evening sessions too, so they get the legally required number of attendances in faster than outsider schools and get the entire months o’ July and August off and three week holidays in stead of the usual outsider fortnight at Christmas and Easter too. Gladys and Harriet have already made arrangements with a lot of local lasses, especially school lasses as want the work, so that we have enough staff, but they’re trying to create receipts that require less kitchen staff input because if they can’t we’ll have to be having a third shift o’ kitchen staff working ower night pre preparing food for the two day shifts to cook and serve.

“If we can fill the spot we need to be able to feed the folk we fill it with. If folk are kept waiting ower long for their food they don’t return and the bad publicity that generates is impossible to undo. Gladys is of the belief that we’re about to turn a corner as regards Bearthwaite’s visitor industry picking up and I agree, so we have to get it right. Some of our folk are discussing completely renovating some of the aulder buildings and creating a big hotel complex, to cover what the rest o’ us can’t. Early days yet but it’ll arrive. It’s not about the brass, if we have to have three shifts operating round the clock for the best part o’ four month then that’s what we’ll do. Mind I reckon the kitchens and the restaurantes will be busy till well gone midnight, and lads ’ll be drinking in here till lang after that. Seeing as Aggie and the early breakfast cooks alus arrive not lang after four te serve our early morning lads, and a load o’ visitors who’ve booked have ordered six o’clock breakfasts we may as well be working round the clock. I reckon that just may mek organising it all a bit easier. However, whether or nay, the kitchen folk need to experiment, so we get to be test subjects. I tek you you don’t object?”

“Hell no, Pete. I like eating here. I’ve had many a surprise, but I’ve never been served anything I didn’t enjoy.”

~Washing My Teeth~

As Sasha stood he said, “I enjoyed that but I’m just off to the kitchen to tek my teeth out and wash ’em. I do that whenever I’ve eaten because small particles of food get between the teeth and my gums and it’s enough to put a man off his chemic.”

Amidst the laughter Stan said, “And you paid how much for the bloody things, Sasha‽”

Sasha smiled and said, “They’re damned good, Stan, but not even serious coin can buy magic.”

Alf said in all seriousness, “Go get ’em washt, Sasha. A man needs to be able to appreciate his chemic properly, and after all we do go to a hell of a lot of effort to obtain it don’t we?”

~o~

Pete asked, “Is that it then, Lads? Time for dominoes? If you lot get us set up I’ll wipe the tables and we should be right by the time Sasha and the other lads are back. Someone let the dogs out please. It wasn’t many minutes before other than the clicking of dominoes there was total silence in the taproom.

~After Time~

Elle asked, “How much money are we talking about to turn Abbey’s and Sun’s vision into reality?”

Sasha replied, “Nothing we can’t pay for up front using small change. Even if we’ve underestimated the cost by fifty percent it’ll still come in at only three million and it’ll end up making money. I suspect a great deal of money. It won’t take the NHS long to climb off their high horse, because if they don’t they’ll be pulled off it. Right now they’ve a backlog of tens of thousands of women needing screening, by the time we get set up that backlog could well be hundreds of thousands, and they’ll end up having to pay our asking price or face the media and public opinion. If we have a screening service available and they won’t pay for it when they already pay a fortune for other private services the opprobrium in the media will slaughter them, because on top of them being seen to put a price on human life it’ll be seen as their pride condemning women to death, and of course Ben Gillis and his publicity team will be leaking that version of the tale to the media from what will appear to be dozens of different sources. Once Josephine Public realises that there is no waiting list for Bearthwaite womenfolk to be screened using state of the art, top of the range equipment and she, who only lives half an hour away in a car, is looking at eighteen months or more for NHS screening on twenty year old or older equipment the protests will be so loud they’ll be heard in Whitehall.

“There’re already numerous pressure groups joining forces and planning on how to force the change with a private members’ bill through parliament. However, even if the law were changed rapidly, which is doubtful, it takes twelve months to train mammographers and there’re only so many they can train in any given year and they’re not only desperately short of mammographers they’re desperately short of folk with the experience to train them. My belief is that a private members’ bill will fail to make it into law on its first attempt, and probably on its second attempt too. I suspect ten to fifteen years will go by before the law changes and prevents the NHS from not accepting men into training and refusing to employ them. The only way out of that for the NHS will be to pay us to deal with some of their backlog regardless of the sex of our mammographers. Sure they’ll tell women that we have male technicians and offer them a choice, but all that will do is allow us to screen women who’d rather be screened by a man than wait a year and a half for a woman to screen them. As the NHS waiting list shrinks due to us they’ll be able to screen more of the women who’d insisted on being screened by a woman. But their women screeners only days will be well and truly dying by then. It’ll not be long after that before they’ll be forced into training and employing men, but like I said it could well be ten to fifteen years before we reach that point. In that possible fifteen years there’ll be three or even four general elections, and given Kemi Badenoch’s recent remarks(50) none can predict what effect that will have on the issue if she is still leader of the conservative party and they get into government. Our medical staff, especially the women, are starting to create a belief amongst women out there that this is actually discrimination against women. If they can achieve enough traction with that it won’t matter what Kemi Badenoch wants if a huge tranche of her electorate want access to a better screening service and are prepared to use their votes to get it.

“It’s Sun’s belief that the NHS will end up paying us to run short courses for their already qualified female mammographers on our equipment because few NHS hospitals will have such available. At that point of course all NHS opposition to our activities will collapse and eventually evaporate. In the end the law will change just like it did for midwives in nineteen seventy-seven(51) when before that it was a female only occupation. Too, any number of private health organisations in nations around the world where male radiographers are denied training will pay us to train their staff. We’ve never had any intention of becoming involved in the initial training of radiographers, so any we train will already be fully qualified and just require the conversion course to add breast screening to their existing skill base. Sun also reckons that since breast cancer is inherently more difficult to detect in men than in women due to their lesser amount of breast tissue, and since we’ll have the best equipment available, we shall probably have most of the men who require screening over a significant part of northern England and Scotland referred to us.

“It is Abbey’s belief that the anticipated flood of men into mammography just won’t happen. Once men were able to train as midwives few did, the UK midwifery workforce is still over ninety-nine point seven percent female, and she opines that though there may well be more men in mammography than there are in midwifery the numbers will not be dramatically different. Chance has an interesting take on the situation as a result of his analysis of such numbers as are available, and his investigations are producing more accurate numbers by the day. It’s his belief that the existing number of mammographers in the UK is actually relatively small, and even the largest hospitals will only have a handful of mammographers. Smaller hospitals he reckons with be sharing one with other small hospitals and it’s possible not all will have the equipment and what they will have will be old. So given the projected shortfall by twenty thirty to be forty percent, even forty percent of a small number is a smaller number still.

“He says that we have the money to pay for training as many in Malta as they can cope with over there. If need be we can always buy them a state of the art piece of equipment to train our folk on. Give it to them and make it clear they can train who they wish on it and use it as part of their own screening programme. Chance opines that we should train anyone who is eligible to train who wishes it be they male or female. His view is once we start making inroads into the NHS waiting lists which we could easily do with a very small number of mammographers, just enough to ensure maximum utilisation of the equipment which he suggested would be four or five, we should buy at least one more set up to drive some more nails home into the NHS coffin lid. If we already have the building and the staff it’ll just be the cost of the equipment we’ll be looking at. If we are doing, lets think big, forty percent of the nations screening, the NHS will have to coöperate with us for fear we’ll just stop doing it. His words were, ‘We don’t actually need the NHS’ money, Sasha, and I can make damned sure they realise that that is the truth. Unlike them we can just walk away because we’re using our own money not the taxpayers.’ Given what he was like when we first met him he has become one extremely hard man, but as Murray told me, ‘Don’t worry, Sasha. He’s on our side.’

“I’ve also been talking to Harwell concerning the security aspects of this. He says he is much more concerned about any radiographers, male or female, we accept for training which will take twelve months rather than the women and the rare male we accept for screening who will only be with us for an hour or two at most. If we make a gradual start and say screen six women a day five days a week till we shake down the system and it’s working smoothly that’s fifteen hundred and sixty women a year. Fifteen hundred and sixty outsiders who we need to ensure can’t find out anything that can be used to hurt us. Harwell says that’s eminently doable, but that’s near enough to the upper limit as to what his staff can easily manage with their existing organisation. It wouldn’t take much effort on our part, once we had enough of our own staff, to double the number of women screened in a day and to work seven days a week. Chance opines we could always recruit existing NHS female mammographers from outside.

“His view was that we owe the NHS nothing, quite the reverse in fact, and he’d have no issues paying headhunted mammographers twenty-five percent more than the NHS does. Most would leap at it because they are grossly overworked and we could cherry pick the best which would hurt the NHS more than they’d realise. NHS staff put in a lot of hours for no pay, work their lunchtimes and breaks, they work their days off and they are all tired because some of them have been doing it for years not months. However, if we do up the numbers in that way once we passed the two thousand a year mark Harwell says he would require a separate rotating group of rangers purely focussed on security for the activity. His senior staff are already working on how to do that such as to minimise the disruption to their staff. He said no matter what happens it’s all doable and for six months now he has his staff up to strength in terms of numbers. He added that he has not stopped recruiting and it is his belief that the next few years’ worth of school leavers from the BEE(52) will produce hundreds of rangers because many already work with his staff. He theorised that if in four years he needs an extra thousand rangers to provide security for a hospital he’ll already have them. He won’t need to recruit just to reorganise what he already will have.

“His senior staff are currently debating how they can manage and improve the situation, but they all agree the biggest single variable is whether the entire matter takes place here at Bearthwaite somewhere in the Auld Bobbin Mill complex or somewhere outside the valley. The security requirements will be very different but equally high. The current consensus is that outside the valley is by far the safer option though the financial cost will be much higher. It will require more rangers to ensure the protection of our staff and equipment, but as I said Harwell said that will not be a problem. In addition we shall need an establishment to house the setup. Harwell already has folk looking into buying a small existing hospital or a very large medical centre. Chance is costing that against the option of a custom built establishment which would provide us with exactly what we require with no compromises, especially concerning security issues. I suspect Harwell’s folk are just going through the motions to ensure we didn’t miss something obvious. You know what he’s like.

“However, it looks like we’ll be building somewhere because although there are several medical centres and cottage hospitals that would be available for what Chance considers to be reasonable money, Abigail, Raven, and Níls, Harwell’s senior security staff, are not happy about having to provide security at any of them due to the way they are constructed. Abigail’s words were, ‘There are buildings all over the place with too many doors and windows that would make security a nightmare. To alter things so as to be better would be as expensive as providing a new build,’ and Raven and Níls agreed with her. I suspect all our medical folk and all our top security folk will need to play a major rôle with Jacqueline and her team of architects alongside a public consultation, if not more than one, to ensure we get the best possible building. Fortunately by then Blake will have taken over the chair of the local authority planning sub committee and the whole matter will be under Bearthwaite control.”

Harriet asked, “Is that it for the night? Can we all seek our beds now?”

All nodded and as Sasha and Elle left for a room upstairs Gustav indicated to the others that he and Peter would lock up.

20738 words including footnotes

1 Twa, dialectal two.
2 Yan, dialectal one.
3 Babbies, dialectal babies.
4 I niver weant any on ’em, I never (didn’t) weaned any of them.
5 Knaws, dialectal knows.
6 Hawick, a small town in Scotland, pronounced Hoyk, IPA hɔ:ɪk.
7 See GOM 61.
8 MMA, Mixed Martial Arts.
9 To knock on is exactly what it sounds like to knock on someone’s door.
10 Mortal coil is a poetic term for the troubles of daily life and the strife and suffering of the world. It is used in the sense of a burden to be carried or abandoned. To shuffle off this mortal coil is to die, exemplified in the To be, or not to be soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
11 The reference is to, Illegitimi non carborundum which is a mock Latin aphorism, often translated as “Don't let the bastards grind you down.” The phrase itself has no meaning in Latin and can only be mock translated.
12 Playing for the other team, in this context the expression refers to being a lesbian. Also used thus is batting for the other side.
13 Rekonin, dialectal reckoning.
14 Ga, go, pronounced gar, IPA ga:.
15 A settle is a wooden bench, usually with arms and a high back, long enough to accommodate three or four sitters.
16 Alus, dialectal always.
17 Sech or sich, Cumbrian dialect, such. Often pronounced seck or sick.
18 Dahn sarf, a northern UK expression making fun of accents from down south or dahn sarf as a southerner would say it.
19 Pun, dialectal pounds.
20 Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) is regulated to reduce the amount of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) incinerated or sent to landfill sites.
21 Gas, goes. Pronounced gars, IPA ga:z.
22 To have the heat out of something, to use it for fuel, to burn it.
23 To have eyes like a shit house rat, an expression signifying having unusually good eyesight.
24 A close coupled crapper, a lavatory were the cistern feeds directly into the pan is said to be close coupled.
25 Combination spanners have an open ended spanner on one end and a ring spanner of the same size at the other end.
26 Cowie, dialectal thing.
27 Deed, dialectal dead.
28 Gan, pronounced garn, also gang pronounced as spelt, and gain pronounced as gah inn, all are dialectal for going or gone and which one comes across depends on exactly whereabouts the speaker originates, respectively their IPA versions are ga:n, gaŋ and ga:in.
29 Heed, dialectal head.
30 Charles Bonnet, born on the 13th of March 1720 in Geneva, Switzerland. Died on the 20th of May 1793 near Geneva. In 1760, after documenting the symptoms experienced by his grandfather, Bonnet was the first to describe a condition in which the brain adjusted to vision loss by creating hallucinations. Bonnet’s own eyesight declined throughout his life, and he also experienced this condition, which would become known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) in 1937.
31 Are ye dancing? Are ye asking? is a pair of lines known to many in the UK though few know that they originate in a 1958 Stanley Baxter comedy sketch involving the popular at the time pair of characters Francie and Josie. Variants of Are you something? Are you asking? Are still widely used in humour.
32 MDPE, Medium Density Polyethane.
33 Chessing, dialectal chasing.
34 Gas, dialectal goes. Pronounced gars, IPA ga:z.
35 Gan radge, gone or going (with) rage, become enraged. Commonplace Cumbrian dialectal form.
36 Oppnin, dialectal opening.
37 Her indoors, a dialectal reference to a man’s wife.
38 Oppners, dialectal openers.
39 Oppen, dialectal open.
40 Babby Stilly, a baby (9 inch) Stillson wrench. Stillson is a particularly popular design of pipe wrench.
41 In her broomstick days, in the days when she was subject to mood changes due to her menstrual cycle.
42 The change, menopause.
43 Scriked at, also greeted at, both are dialectal for cried at, and all forms of the verbs to scrike and to greet are in common, current usage in Cumbria. Scrike is more common to the south of Cumbria and greet is more common to the north of Cumbria.
44 Chess, dialectal chase.
45 Haag, a long handled tool often used for clearing ditches and ponds. It is like a long handled, three or four tined garden fork with the tines bent downwards at about ninety degrees. It is used similarly to a rake to pull weeds and other debris out of the water.
46 Ratching, dialectal rummaging. To ratch, to rummage.
47 Yance ower, dialectal once over, refers to an event in the distant past. Also used to begin children’s stories where it is equivalent to once upon a time.
48 Babbies, babies, in this context applies to any child under the age of about five.
49 Gey strang, dialectal very strong.
50 Kemi Badenoch, leader of the conservative opposition party.
51 It is now nearly half a century since 28 men were tentatively admitted on to pilot schemes to train as midwives in 1977, with restrictions to men entering the profession fully lifted in 1983. Resistance to this radical change from female midwives was strong with a fear that the advent of men into the profession posed a threat from perverts or those seeking male domination by occupying senior posts. In the intervening years, however, there has been no significant increase in the number of men entering the profession, with men currently representing only 0.3% of the midwifery population in the UK.
52 The BEE, the Bearthwaite Educational Establishment. The school.

21812 words including footnotes.