Beamish - Part II

In addition to scaring myself by imagining going down the elevator into the blackness of a pit mine, another fun thing we did was to go into a drift mine. I wasn't really frightened of that, but my pictures are lousy because I didn't dare stop and get left behind. It was rather dark in there as well.

Whilst waiting for the last group to emerge, the tour guide talked us through this schematic of the tunnels in a mine. The tunnels were spaced apart such that their 'roof' would be supported. There are signs all over the place warning that hewing from unauthorised locations would result in dismissal or arrest. Obviously if too many chose the same 'column' it would result in a collapse. In any case, miners received free coal for heating their cottages as part of their remuneration.


The height of the tunnels varied, depending upon whether man or beast would be working them. We noticed this short little horse, too big to be a Shetland pony, but later deduced he was a pit horse, meant to drag the tubs of coal around. We were told that the regulation height of tunnels meant for horses had to be around 4 feet; men were expected to work in much more cramped spaces, something less than 2 feet on occasion. Of course it was the perfect occasion to point out that the mine owners cared more for their horses than for their men. That's as may be, then again, I don't remember ever seeing a horse crawl...is it possible?


With that, we entered the mine, bent over at the waist to pit pony height. Bill pointed out that the floors had neat paving down the middle, a nicety there for tourists. The floor was plenty wet all the same. Once we got around the corner, I stopped to take a picture of the entrance. My camera liked that a lot better than some of the other things I asked it to do.


Our first stop was to see an automated coal cutting machine. They weren't widely available until the 20th century, but they did cut coal four times as fast as a man. However, the miner working with the machine didn't get 4 times the pay. After about 6 months or so what he got was deaf. It was so loud, they nicknamed the machine a 'panzer'.

We also got a little lecture about miners' lamps. Seems that originally, miners used acetylene lamps. Acetylene gas is the produced when calcium carbide, which comes from limestone and coke, is mixed with water. Acetylene illumination was used widely in the early 19th Century and this, we were told, is the source of the phrase 'Being in the limelight.' More about lamps later.

Then we went along to see a few other things associated with a typical workplace.


The long things on the left are the drill bits for making deep holes for explosives. This is the next thing my mind wouldn't accept. Bad enough to be crawling around the the dark with water and rats and such -- well almost dark;


apparently one gets used to this and can see quite well... Imagine being in a crawlspace waiting for the wall to explode. Sounds completely mental to me.

Then we took a moment to consider the living conditions in the cottages, with no running water or electricity. Someone realised that would mean -- gasp -- no hair dryers! Meanwhile, I was still trying to picture me sitting in the near dark, lighting some dynamite or something and waiting for it to go off.

Nope, wouldn't happen.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me! I share this birthdate with a few notable people, including:

Walt Whitman, 1819
Norman Vincent Peale, 1898
Don Ameche, 1908
Clint Eastwood, 1930
Joe Namath, 1943
Lea Thompson, 1961
Brooke Shields, 1965

Don't you think that's generous of me? (Put me somewhere in between Namath & Thompson...)

Beamish Open Air Museum

Beamish is another place I've heard about a long time, meant to go see, but just never did until this past holiday weekend. I'm glad I waited after all, because what I saw there was so much more interesting after having visited Dalry and buried my head in the lifestyle of miners in Victorian times.


It was the first day I've gone without a sweater or waterproof covering, the weather was really lovely, and a lot of other people also seemed to have realised that it was a good day on which to visit an open air museum. The queue was probably the longest I've stood in for years.

Beamish, in County Durham, has 300 acres on which buildings have been gathered -- as in de- and re- constructed-- to join some that were already located there. We spent nearly 4 hours there and only covered the colliery village, but that's how it goes when you stop and take a picture or 10 every 2 minutes. See how much I think about you guys?


Right. Let's see how much of this stuff I can remember. Those red buildings are the pithead. The steam-powered train does a short run back and forth so you can see where the cars line up underneath. Inside the building is the elevator that takes men down into the mine shaft and brings up the bins full of coal and mining waste. The coal goes into the train cars after it has been picked over by boys or elderly miners. If a tub -- which normally weighed around half a tonne -- contained more than 20 pounds of waste, the miner was fined!


The waste goes along the bridge over to the refuse heap on the far left. I was interested in all this this because one of my ancestors is listed on a Census record in Dalry as a 'pithead labourer'.


On this board, a miner hung his numbered tag to show he was down the mine (I wonder if that's why they always say around here 'down the pub' or 'down the town' omitting the word 'to'). I found it chilling to learn that the miner's payroll number tags went also on his lamp, into the tub of coal he hewed so as to be credited for his work, and one remained with him, in the event of his body needing to be identified.


It was difficult to tell, so much paint was missing from the sign, but Bill reckoned there had been a fore shift (3 - 10.30 AM), a back shift (9:30AM - 5PM), a night shift (4PM - 11.30 PM) and a 10PM shift (10PM - 5.30 AM). I had to make myself get close enough to actually look down the mine shaft. I simply cannot imagine going down into a hole half a mile under the surface at any time, but especially not starting out in the dark of night. For some reason that just makes it seem even more unbearable.

English Social History

At this writing I am not quite half way through a fascinating book: English Social History, A Survey of Six Centuries, Chaucer to Queen Victoria, by G.M. Trevelyan, published 1942.

"Oh, fascinating", I hear you thinking. But it really is. The author is quick to explain that social history is somewhere between economic history and political history; social history describes what life was like for everyday people. It is like reading some historical novel without the bodice ripping; it's a rags to riches (or the reverse) without the individual romance. To make up for not supplying the juicier bits, this book does far better: I'm finding the missing links in my understanding of English history. Yes, I'll still love Forever Amber and the movies Braveheart and Robin Hood, but I love even more having a better understanding of how things fit together and why.

Also, I'm finding words used in a different context, finding words that are more common around this part of the world used in their original sense, learning more about some of the architectural wonders in my very backyard, so to speak. And, guess what I'm going to be telling you about over the next few weeks...or months? Sorry about that (I'm not really).

The book begins with Chaucer's England: 1340 - 1400. The Black Plague first reached England in 1348-9. There was a feudal system in place, with only upper and lower classes: lords and peasants. Peasants were tied to the land and had no salary, as such, but they also had certain rights as well. However, because there was limited land and so many people, they had no bargaining power. They lived at a level that literally made a hot meal a luxury.

The Plague removed as much as one-third of England's population and turned the tables on the lords. Now there was not enough labour and too much land to manage without it, at least in the old way. The labourers were no longer tied to the land and began to travel; they also expected to be paid for their work.

This resulted in the more forward looking of the peasants to become yeomen farmers, who managed large tracts of land on behalf of the lords, bargaining with the peasant labourers, enclosing farm lands and building up their own wealth. In short, establishing a middling class.

My new word for you is 'demesne' - pronounced duhMAIN (It's French, but from the Latin dominium. It caught my eye because I've visited the small museum at Woodhorn Colliery in Northumberland and one of the place names up there is Woodhorn Demesne. I never could remember how to say the name, but I'll remember it now. In Trevelyan's book, it explains that the lord kept the best of his agricultural land for himself, rather than for his serfs. However, as part of their contract, his serfs were required to spend certain days working his demesne, which they did so grudgingly.

And now, because you've been good and read all


the way to this point, I'll share with you some pretty pictures, taken on the day I


went hunting for pink snow. These are of Tynemouth Golf Course


and one of the houses nearby.

Artistic Parsnip

Being the lazy, ignorant, sporadic gardener that I am, there are generally at least 3 or 4 things growing out there that I haven't a clue what they are. Sometimes Bill makes an accurate identification, but not always.

The problem with root vegetables is that the useful information (for me anyhow) is buried and so once you've 'unearthed' the information, one is stuck with the result.

This one was a particular surprise. In doing some quick reading, I gather the soil is not sufficiently sandy (which is odd, us living at the coast) and that this parsnip must have encountered an obstacle that made it branch out and stop growing.


Pretty ugly isn't it? When I first picked it, though, I was thinking it looked rather....artistic.

Green Market Shopping

I don't think I shop like most people over here. Folks seem to either slavishly attend the supermarket they feel most closely identifies the class of people with whom they wish to be associated -- I wish I were joking, but I'm not. Over here where you shop for food actually labels you and I know women who look down at others (me, for example) for shopping in a less prestigious supermarket. I laugh at them just as I laugh at the prices they are paying at Sainsburys or Marks & Spencers.

Some people use their village shops: the baker, butcher and green grocer all being separate. This might be because public transport takes them there, or it may be that they've found that establishing a relationship with the local butcher gets you the best special order turkey at Christmas, and the like. This may be the best option if your transport is limited and you have time to shop little and often. I'm not sure the prices are the best, however, and these shops are suffering fierce competition with the larger supermarkets. Not every village has a full complement of shopping facilities anymore.

Another option is to use the newer, smaller supermarket's that have a name for being inexpensive. I know some of these have branches in the US: Aldi, Nettos, Lidl. They put out weekly flyers advertising their 'sales'. These are not the same as the loss leader items in the flyers I got in the US. I find that they are overly liberal with their use of words such as 'only' 'extra' and 'sale'. I trust what my price book tells me over their words. [If you don't have as much money as you would like, I would urge you to develop a price book.] There are some good deals to be had, however, if you know enough to recognise them.

I seem to do a little of each. My shopping days start at a street called Double Row, in Seaton Delaval, about 8 miles north of us.


There are a group of shops, one of which is a green grocer, another a butcher and finally a funny little corner shop that sells a bit of everything; there aren't many great deals there, but I generally poke around just in case.

I first learned about Double Row from Bill, when he mentioned the price his care home in Blakelaw paid for meats from Prime Cut compared with our local supermarket. We went one day to check it out and I've gone back ever since.


I mentioned in the past that I don't do weekly menus, but more fortnightly (that's a commonly used word over here, meaning 2 weeks, or 14-nights). Beans and fish are the more frequently recurring sources of protein I aim to serve, with cheese and meat the least common. I try to have a little bit of everything on hand at all times and when you buy chicken breasts 10 pounds at a time and make a meal for two out of one large breast, it takes a while to run out. What we eat more than anything is fruit and veg and so I'm delighted to have found Laidlers.


Last Friday I paid £17.91 for:

a small box of strawberries
2.15kg (4.7lbs) of carrots
10 kiwi fruit
3.676kg (8.1) of onions
10 satsumas
a large cucumber
1.21kg (2.67) beetroot
.904kg (1.99) mushrooms
.56kg parsnips
2 packets of radishes
2 small boxes of cherry tomatoes on the vine
2 large bell peppers - 2 red and 2 yellow
1 bunch of asparagus,
a bag of red seedless grapes and
2 heads of broccoli
(pounds in parentheses for non-metric readers)


This will last us at around 2-3 weeks. The race to eat it all before it goes off helps keep our eating very healthy and of course this is supplemented with produce from the garden.. If necessary, I blanch and freeze the veg or just freeze the fruit for later use in spice cake.


I didn't need anything from the butchers and so proceded to Morrisons, the supermarket nearest me and one whose prices compare very favourably with other big chains, such as Tesco or Sainsburys. Morrisons bought out Safeway a few years ago, a name I knew in the US.

Morrisons is on my way home from Double Row. There I bought everything I put on my list when it ran out: bread making supplies, condiments, oatmeal, tinned and frozen vegetables, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc. I've done the price per unit comparison on most everything and though their prices have risen, they are still lower than comparable supermarkets. (I check on them now and then.) However, their fruit and veg prices -- with the exception of bananas -- are well above what I pay at Seaton Delaval.

Then I proceeded to Nettos in North Shields, only about a mile out of my way. I bought a couple of jars of coffee at about half of what Morrison's wants. For a long time Nettos had milk for 5 - 24p cheaper than other stores, but they've caught up now. I picked up a couple of boxes of (sinful, I know!) macaroni & cheese. It's one of the few convenience foods I buy, mainly because it reminds me of home and I absolutely love the stuff, even though Bill isn't certain it qualifies as actual food. I notice he eats it, though. It saves me buying a whole brick of cheese when cheese is on the menu. We have never managed to resist consuming the things within a couple of days unless I grate it all up and freeze it quickly!

Doing my shopping at those 3 stores takes me a couple of hours every 3-4 weeks. The two of us eat very well on only £50-60 a month, what most many people pay per week -- or for a meal out! I plan to carry on in this way where ever I live, seeking out the green markets or farmers markets, the best deals at supermarkets and finding the thrify shops. I think it makes purchasing food more fun and far less painful.

Happy Spring Bank Holiday?

Today is a bank holiday Monday. I still haven't after all these years got my head around bank holidays and what they are for. Apparently it's not just about when banks are closed -- and of course they are on these days -- but also about the original legislation dating back to 1871 and whether current employment law requires essential emergency employees to be compensated for working those days or not. That's all I'm going to say about the matter except that in 1871 a Sir John Lubbock introduced the Bank Holidays Act because he really liked cricket and thought bank employees should be able to attend matches when they were scheduled. I suppose that's as good a reason as any.

I've long been bemused by the fact that the US Embassy in London is shut both on American and British holidays. Different parts of Britain, being different countries, celebrate different holidays. I do my business in London and they have 15 public holidays. However, the embassies at Dublin and Edinburgh enjoy 19 public holidays, in addition to having more interesting accents. Just imagine having all these days off:

1 Jan	New Years Day	All
2 Jan	Hogmanay Bank Holiday	Scotland
19 Jan	Martin Luther King's BD	US
16 Feb	Washington's Birthday	US
17 Mar	St Patrick's Day	Ireland
10 Apr	Good Friday	UK
13 Apr	Easter Monday	UK
4 May	May Bank Holiday	UK
18 May	Victoria Day	Scotland
25 May	Spring Bank Holiday / Memorial Day	All
1 Jun	June Bank Holiday	Ireland
3 Jul	Independence Day	US
3 Aug	Summer Bank Holiday	GB
7 Sep	Labor Day	US
21 Sep	Autumn Bank Holiday	US (?)
26 Oct	October Bank Holiday	Ireland
11 Nov	Veterans Day	US
26 Nov	Thanksgiving	US
25 Dec	Christmas Day	All
26 Dec	St. Stephens / Boxing Day	GB

Having looked at all this, I can't help but wonder what sort of holidays they get at the offices of the European Union? Could explain why it takes them so long to get anything done...