Clogs and condoms
Richard West
TAppleby-in- Westmorland he basic history of the town can be read on the souvenir dish-cloth I bought:
950 First Danish settlement 1179 Royal Charter granted 1204 Appleby Castle granted to Robert de Vetriponte 1574 Charter granted to Grammar School by Queen Elizabeth 1781 William Pitt became MP for Appleby 1974 Appleby's 800 years as a Royal Borough ended by the creation of Cumbria 1976 Town name changed to Appleby- in-Westmorland to commem- orate its traditional role as county town of Westmorland.
Still worse things have happened, Presumably after my dish-cloth went to press. 'Margaret Thatcher provided the final indignity,' said Mr Reg Folder, an Ap- Pleby Liberal politician 'when this part of the old Westmorland constituency was merged with Penrith and the Border' which went to the polls this week in a by- election created by Willie Whitelaw's eleva- tion to the House of Lords. Incidentally, when Lord Whitelaw was once asked (by the late George Hutchinson) why he had not protested against the Heath/Walker rearrangement of counties, he answered (according to Mr Hutchinson): '1 must have been asleep in Cabinet at the time.' Much has changed in Appleby and its neighbourhood besides the absorption of Westmorland in 'Cumbria'. The deformed hymns, Bible and liturgy of the Church of England — the subject of recent Spectator letters — are much in evidence here. Hymn 85 was announced at a local church 'omit- ting verse 4', which turned out to include those wonderful lines
Arabian desert rangers To Him shall bend the knee, The Ethiopian strangers His glory come to see
The Bible at Appleby Church was open at John xvi, in a version that read: 'Till now I have been using figures of speech; a time is coming when I shall no longer use figures of sPeech but tell you of the Father in plain words.' (The Authorised Version has:
`These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.') A plaque in Appleby Church reads: `To preserve the Rememberance of a long and valuable life, spent in the most useful of all Employments, this marble is inscribed with the name of RICHARD YATES MA, Fifty-eight years Master of the Grammar School in the town, whom an accurate knowledge of Roman literature, a just and most harmonious Elocution, unwearied Diligence and a serious Attention to the moral and religious improvement of his Pupils, eminently qualified for the impor- tant station which he held. He died December 31st AD 1781 and in the Eight- first year of his age.' How many of Richard Yates's qualifications would help him to get a job now at Appleby Grammar School, granted a charter in 1574 by Queen Elizabeth, and turned into a comprehensive by Shirley Williams, almost exactly 400 years later?
Change has not brought any special pro- sperity to this part of England. The farming community, which makes up some 15 per cent of the voters in the constituency, are well off; perhaps because Heath, Walker and Williams could not devise a way to tinker with cattle and sheep. At any rate, the buyers and sellers at Penrith market ap- peared to be fairly well pleased with life, though it is quite impossible to make sense of their esoteric shop talk: 'She was an old cow but she looked washed and sharp and clean and the bidding started — 700, 800, 900 — and I was left clutching the catalogue between my knees.'
Prosperity is not to be found outside the farming community. Like Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow and other great cities that have destroyed their means of work, even little Penrith has its museum of industry, in this case of steam engines. It is a wonderful assemblage of tractors, road-making engines, a mill engine (used for grinding the oats of London horses) and even a 78-key dance organ, with drums and harmonium. A bearded attendant told me that mill engines 'tend to go berserk and throw their flywheels all over the place' — but the main annoyance at this delightful museum comes from an aluminium roof that was put on the shed three years ago. It creaks and cracks like a sailing ship in a storm at changes in weather. 'The people who put it on said it would settle down,' I was told by the bearded man, 'but it's like that whenever the sun shines. Like crows with clogs on.'
Clogs, oddly enough, are a local product, though here they mean steel-plated boots rather than wooden shoes. There is a barber's shop in Penrith whose window display consists of clogs and condoms. Otherwise local industry does not flourish. This is not because of 'the cuts' or some wicked plot by Margaret Thatcher to bump up enemployment but rather that here, as in the rest of England, the cost of running a small private business is made prohibitive by taxation. For instance, I met a young man who had recently qualified as a bricklayer but feared that he might soon be back on the dole. Why, I inquired, did he not set up as a free-lance bricklayer, work- ing for one of the many small building firms that are so prosperous? (In London, good builders are virtually unobtainable) 'I wouldn't dare to go self-employed,' he said, and explained that his father, an in- dependent milkman, is going crazy over the income tax that he owes and cannot pay, and his mother now says that she can't sleep at night. He himself is paying not only some of his wages to his parents for housekeep- ing, but more to help them pay off their tax debts. He would prefer unemployment, not because he dislikes work, but just to avoid the worry of high taxation.
Appleby people say that the town is most prosperous during the annual gypsy fair, which was so well described last year by Roy Kerridge in the Spectator. I was told: `They used to be horse dealers, now they're all car dealers They take their caravans on holidays, but for the rest of the year it's a Mercedes, a collar and tie.' Tourism has suffered badly from foreign competition and also from the appalling English Tourist Board and other meddling bodies that want to turn the old Lake District into a packag- ed 'amenity area'. The hotel where I stayed was not congenial. The persistent tape of doleful music, including at regular intervals 'The Old Rugged Cross' slowly reduced one elderly guest to the point of tears. He was not cheered up when the landlord ap- proached him the following day: 'You know there's a whole library of Reader's Digest compendium books in the television room, if you want something to read.'
A graffiti in the gents of the excellent 'Golden Ball' pub says 'Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall — and got shot by the East German guards'; and a young man entered the bar wearing a 'Holiday in Cambodia' T-shirt; but otherwise I heard little com- ment on politics.
Taking the train south, I wondered why anyone wanted to leave this glorious part of England. At Leeds Station, the buffet was patronised by youths with swastikas and National Front signs tattooed on their arms and faces. I was back in Shirley Williams's brave new world.
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