July 11, 2015
Pity Me, England: Undermined by miners
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PITY ME. Not an instruction but a place. Lovely, isn't it? And all the better because nobody knows why.
We're in north-east England, far enough from London that people no longer see a link with the south. They speak with an accent so distinctive and warm and above all neutral - Londoners are crooks, East Anglians straighten their eyes before they speak, Yorkshiremen have short stubby fingers and not a grain of artistic appreciation, and so on - that companies base their call centres here.
It's a stop-start accent that changes vowels back to how they were before the Great Vowel Shift. It adds a sing-song touch that shows Scotland is no longer far away.
Hard to write it but "Ay woonder if theeer's boooter for tea" would inquire if there's butter for tea.
We're outside Durham, a beautiful city once surrounded by mines and on a coast lined, just further north, by shipyards. They're none of them here any more. In the glory days of mines, whole communities grew up around them. Generations went "doon the pit". They fought against hard-hearted pit owners who, even right-wing historians concede, weren't eager to put safety or conditions before profit.
From that came trade unions, each with its branch and each branch with its flag or standard. And once a year they paraded through the Durham, following their band, each trying to outdo the next. Well, the mines are no longer there but the tradition still is and so are the banners, now faded and tattered.
Thousands come to watch, to empathise and good-humouredly drunk in the street. It was in epic mis-timing that we got here in the middle of it. Because if only a fraction of the tipsy gang stayed overnight, that was every bed taken.
As we soon discovered.
Two Ulstermen who belonged to a union that had no link with mining but flew from Belfast to be part of it anyway told us to try the university, where they had a room. We did, and they didn't. Not did anywhere else. And nor was there a campground.
We began riding on tired legs. Maybe there was somewhere to camp wild. And maybe there wouldn't be. We asked about hotels and someone suggested Pity Me. Maybe it'd be far enough not to be full. We tried the more humble of the two and, yes, that was not only full but a band was setting up amplifiers in the bar. We went to the grander, were quoted an outrageous price... and took it. There are times you'll pay what it takes.
We never saw the Ulstermen again, which was a shame. We'd agreed to meet for a drink.
For decades, talking to people from Northern Ireland was a nightmare. The province was in a political whirlpool in which many in Britain would have got shot of it while a third of those within the six counties were desperate to stay part of Britain, a third wanted varying mixtures of independence, alliance with Ireland to the south or, more simply, a better deal from local democracy, and the remaining third just wished the others would calm down.
Things were often comically difficult. A bradcaster called Gerry Anderson so often referred to "Derry / Londonderry" that the place became known as Stroke City. Londonderry was the name given by Protestant incomers and Derry the old name readopted by the city council. There was no way to say one or the other and remain neutral. Just as with many surnames - Mc or Mac as prefix - which you said showed your religious and therefore political allegiance. And that, in the wrong area and bad company, could be risky.
The half-cut guys sitting against the wall in Durham laughed at the dark memories.
"The people were always ahead of the politicians," the more talkative said. "We could see the way forward but they wouldn't take it. Funny thing is that the most dangerous areas back then, the ones with the murals on the wall, they're all tourist attractions now. All the old sectarian estates and the divided areas. And it's had funny effects because I've been all over Europe and a lot of the world but it's only these last years I've been to parts of Belfast no distance from my home."
Shame we didn't see them again. I could have chatted all night.
Happy discovery of the day? Arriving in sunshine in Sedgefield and discovering the pickled parson. The story goes that back in the 1700s the village parson died just before the people were due to pay him their tithe, a tenth of their income for the year. His wife, already upset that her husband had pegged it, was even more distressed that she wasn't going to get the money. So she put him in a barrel and pickled him in salt water so she could pull him out later and insist that he had died after the tithe date.
The other moment that makes the village good value is the Shrove Tuesday ball game. Since the 13th century, tradesmen and farmers have battled over a small leather ball, the farmers trying to get it into a dribble of water in Spring Lane and the tradesmen, resisted by farmer, fighting with brawny arms and sunburned faces, towards a pond at the north end of the village.
There aren't many farmers or tradesmen these days but that hasn't stopped the game being played. Nor has it made the rules clearer or the violence less.
Today's ride: 98 km (61 miles)
Total: 1,720 km (1,068 miles)
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