Paradise Lane In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a Jewish traveller is stripped, beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. A priest and Levite come along and seeing him, cross to the opposite side...
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Donald Trump on Africa `We are having all these people from shithole countries come here!’ And in a tweet aimed at Somalia-born Democrat, Ilhan Omar `Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and...
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In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar, having trampled his foes and trashed their temple, held a great feast to celebrate his victory. When the party was in full swing, the hand of God appeared, and as the...
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It’s getting like New Delhi around here for begging and street sleeping. Unprecedented in my lifetime; on busy shopping days they line the routes like sitting Buddhas, creating eddies in the pedestrian...
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It’s difficult to avoid. The aristocracy still owns a third of Britain, with the Duke holding 140.000 acres, including a sizable chunk of Lancashire. It means that any self-respecting boy with a sense of...
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This time last year the Treasury sent out a self-congratulatory tweet announcing that millions of us had helped end the slave trade through our taxes. The 184-year loan, taken out by the government in 1833 to...
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For those checking in for tips on outdoor marijuana cultivation, I’m sorry to disappoint. The weed in question here is Himalayan balsam: introduced into parks and gardens by Victorians with a penchant for the...
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Anyone visiting or living in the Lake District, or any other place of natural beauty for that matter; and who are sensitive and at peace within themselves and their environment will have on occasion sat on a...
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These are austere times for many families. The ‘tightening of belts’ is squeezing the life out of many of our communities. Minimum wage jobs, zero hours and short-term contracts, flexi-hours;...
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The Solway Firth forms a natural border between England and Scotland. Over ten miles wide at its mouth, it narrows to a patchwork of marshland and estuaries where the rivers Esk and Eden...
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You’d have thought that freedom of choice and expression along with access to information, were not just a right, but a basic necessity. Like eating and breathing they are the things that...
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Seathwaite Tuff is a silica rich white volcanic rock that formed in a crater lake over a hundred million years ago. It appears as a two metre wide seam fifteen hundred feet above ground level in the...
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I met Michael Webster at Dove Cottage around twelve years ago. He and poet Paul Farley recorded the nocturnal noises within the house and using a computer program, transcribed the sounds into...
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“The common people ther do pray for shippes which they sie in danger. They al sit downe upon their knees and hold up their handes and say very devotedly. Lord, send her to us, God send her to us. Seeing them...
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High Tides and Shifting Sands The tidal bore that emerges from the Lune Deeps at the mouth of Morecambe Bay is said to run faster than a galloping horse, flooding the channels that cut through...
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Of Sorcery… It was on a Lammas night, When corn rigs are bonie, Beneath the moon’s unclouded light, I held away to Annie: The time flew by, wi tentless heed, Till ‘tween the late and early;...
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Pareidolia is a Greek word for the psychological condition that causes us to see faces in objects. The phenomena originates from an inbuilt survival instinct, activated at birth that allows us to recognise...
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The twisted road that snakes itself over the pass isn’t for the faint hearted. Impassable for much of the winter it’s a gravity-defying ascent that tests your engine and your nerve as you make your way up and...
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He said he’d show me dinosaurs, but with visibility down to just a few feet, there could’ve been brontosaurus having a garden party and we wouldn’t have known anything about it… Leo Walmsley lives at the Old...
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‘You can’t sit there.’ I’d just got a pint at the Corporation and was about to sit down in the corner chair. ‘Why not?’ I said a bit perplexed. ‘That’s Albert’s seat’ ‘There’s no-one here’ I said...
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If from the public way you turn your steps Uip the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Gill. No habitation there is seen but such As journey thither find themselves alone With a few sheep, with...
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Our taste for exotic and alternative food isn’t new. Curry was a popular dish in this country in the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century: the first vegetarian restaurants also opened around that time,...
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Michael Mitchell studied history at Southampton University, before moving to Grasmere in 1993, where he helps manage the Wordsworth gift shop and works in finance. His interests are...
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http://markwardpoet.co.uk/backyard/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TEMPUS_F_AMENDED-Converted.mov.m4v Over 40% of the houses in Grasmere are holiday homes, most of which sit empty through the Winter, In Elterwater...
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Each generation makes the landscape its own. We are all of us simply temporary managers of the places we inherit or buy – It’s all ephemeral. For years now, farmers have been having a hard time....
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The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other...
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Sally Hall plays the clarinet: she’s also my boss who works as the Senior Guide at Dove Cottage where she deals with the day to day running of the house and gardens – where we often find ourselves working...
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Traditionally the Lake District’s economy was sustained by farming and heavy industry. Wool, heavy metals, slate, coal and graphite were processed here and exported around the country and beyond, but...
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John Dixon was a publisher, author and historian who, in the spirit of notable Blackburn writers Alfred Wainwright and Jessica Lofthouse created a series of historic walks through the Lancashire...
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I’ve just returned from Blackburn: my hometown and a place we’ll revisit a number of times over the course of this blog. My parents, grandparents and generations of my family lie in its cemeteries. Tim and...
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