Morning after reflections.

I walked into our village in the late afternoon yesterday to pick up a couple of things from the co-op store. The village was full to bursting, lots of people out and about in the sunshine, standing around, some of them sitting around, waiting for bands to turn up. Some had brought folding chairs to sit on the pavement and, in at least a couple of cases, read a book between bands. Some just sat on the edge of the pavement. Stewards cleared the way whenever a band came thought. An amazing number of people were eating fish and chips. It was quite difficult to get from the side streets onto the High Street and from the High Street into the co-op. I did not see one person I recognised but I did see Dobcross band, one of the nearby village bands, march into the village.

This morning at about 9.00 I ran through the village. Apart from a skip full of bags of rubbish, you wouldn’t have known that a festival of sorts had been going on in the centre yesterday. Someone must have been up early doing a clean-up job. There were a number of bottles and cans and plastic glasses on the various paths behind the village. And when I went to put rubbish in our general waste bin I spotted a number of cans. I considered fishing them out and putting them in the recycling bin but thought better of it. And I would rather street-drinkers put their empties in my bin rather then just tossing them over our garden wall or dumping them in the gutter. 

Over the last few years I have salvaged a number of perfectly decent beer glasses, abandoned on walls here and there around the village. This, of course, is why there are plastic glasses dropped in various places. 

Some years ago today, the Saturday after Whit Friday, used to be Beer Walk Day. Groups of people paid a subscription fee, got dressed up in ridiculous costumes and walked in a parade around Saddleworth, collecting money for the charity of their choice as they went. A group of us did it one year, dressed as babies, collecting money for the National Childbirth Trust. The parade went from pub to pub, stopping for a half pint at each one and sweating off the alcohol by rushing to the next one. I think it was organised by the Round Table but I might be completely mistaken. 

The route used to take them up Lark Hill, the steep path we also call the Quarry Road in our family. The various groups would drag “cars” and “carts” and “prams” of rickety construction up the hill and then down the other side to Dobcross or Diggle. We have often reflected as we have walked up there recently that the surface of so badly eroded that it would be pretty much impossible to drag anything up there nowadays. Besides, the Beer Walk stopped happening long before lockdown came along. Maybe out more health conscious age frowned on encouraging what was effectively a pub crawl in fancy dress. There have been occasional attempts to revive it but all unsuccessful. Is this progress? I don’t know.

The pub next door seems to be full of Saturday revellers anyway. No need for a Beer Walk. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!