Slipping & Sliding

Sideways
You might have arrived here via a laterally "thinked-out" link from
If not, nip back and see! Good, isn't it? Football to building ships in Burntisland! But, could have done it through David Danskin....Who? ..DD born 9-1-1863, Burntisland. Died in 1948, but before he did he founded Arsenal Football Club! As for Chic Murray, he wasn't born in Burntisland, but he did draw attention to the superiority of staircases over escalators with his "They lead all the way up. They lead all the way doon, too!" With escalators you definitely need two! So why are roll-on/roll-off ferries, of which Burntisland had the world's first, so termed? They'd be pretty useless if you could only roll on, or off. You'd need two ferries! Don't

Slipping backward,
Burntisland 1941.
Corfoss

Like the astonishment of Diane and Gene on 25th July 2009, (Martin's birthday), when a Supermarine Spitfire flew right over their garden. If Spitfire poo exists then this bird fits the criterion set out on and Spitfire can join the list, not to mention the Avro Vulcan, which followed! But, extaordinary it turned out not to be, and the planes were back a couple of weeks later, helping Silloth celebrate 150 years of having a nice new dock, along with a basin full of visiting ships, boarding for the use of, which D & G eagerly did.

Sliding Forward,
Caermote Hill 1995.
Diane

worry. It gets dafter and there are more

Foot Club.

sideways links to come, before you get to the skiing and stuff, which is what this page is supposed to be about!

Welcome

Back to Foot Club

One was a (Marr's) Fleetwood trawler, which took Gene back to Hull, even though it didn't actually leave the dock, but even more poignant, a Mersey tug, Brocklebank, OK, so Gene has links to tugs. But Mersey is a long way from Humber. Yeah, but it ain't so far from Weaver though, is it? Turns out that Brocklebank was built at Yarwood's yard in Northwich, where D & G lived without knowing it...that there was shipbuilding, not that they lived there! Mind you, it was before their time. Yarwood's operated 1896 to 1966, and from 1947 was run by a subsidiary of United Molasses, a company Gene's dad worked for. They built 32 tugs from 1955 to 1965, Brocklebank in 1964. Gosh, all these sideways links! Well, the last Northwich tug, (1965), St. Elmo, (168 tons), went to Malta and, as Katrin, still operates in Valletta. Philip moved to Malta in 2008.
Now the Weaver is "thin", like the Ouse at Selby, where Cochrane's built lots of the Hull tugs. So, guess how both yards had to launch their ships! Correct! Sideways!

(See Naughtycal).

The two pictures, slipping and sliding at the top of the page are taken just days short of 54 years apart, 4 if the Caermote one is 27th December, as is believed, but it too could be 29th.
Gene's mam went sledging on 27th, which is why that's the favoured date.

And where's Martin's?

2

3

1

Change colour..back to English! A famous Barney snow occurred just prior to G's 1966 arrival; helicopter-delivered supplies, employees sleep-over at Glaxo, the lot, the "rescue" of would be escapees rocketing searcher Chris Siggers to media fame, . Little to do with skiing, though, with which one problem is pre-downhill uphill. Forget non-mechanical-assist methods. One needs a tow!
Which describes exactly Glaxo's short and puny portable effort: one....at a time! But it was a start and, best of all, it was upward Rearrange long..short..story..cut! Skiing in the area already existed: Teesdale Ski Club; tows on Three Pikes, Northumbrian Ski Club; tow at Allenheads, Weardale Ski Club; tows- Swinhope. Glaxo and Swaledale Outdoor Centre pioneering Yad Moss: The Harwood Ski Federation! Impressive! And at 2000 ft.+ in with a bloody good chance! By '75-'76 there were 4 tows, 1000x2, 450 and 150, all in feet, (other units available!)

See String & Chord

...1 and 2...same Gene, same hat, same coat and same pose!
Different winter. One of the photos is in Val Veny, Italy, the other a field down Calf Lonning, Plumbland! Clue as to which is which... Plumbland isn't noted for Alpine views, but you're highly likely to encounter strewn wellies! The connection is...
Cockermouth School
In Gene's 19 year's at Cockermouth he was snowed-in at Plumbland two, or three times, February 6th & 7th 1996, following a White Christmas in '95, being one. Schools closed, out came sledges and skis. Cockermouth's Ski-Trip to Courmayeur in Jan-Feb 1989 hit a last minute snag; one of the

Altrincham Ice Rink

Diane took her Girl Guides and someone skated over one of her fingers, almost cutting off the end. Moral: don't fall, wear gloves, or both!
Billingham Ice Rink
Philip once gave a 2-hour non-stop demonstation of his (then) unique style, in which blade to ice angle remains permanently at 45º, blades, therefore, mutually at right angles.
But is it a family trait? Martin spontaneously adopted the same technique on his 11th birthday when he put on roller blades for the first time.
Robinsons have cut shapes, (if not figures), at Dumfries, Kirkcaldy
and Whitley Bay Ice Rinks, but not all at once!

Corfoss Launch Party 1941.
Gene's mam without posh
coat!

Yarwood's Shipbuilding

When is a lake not a lake?

Middle L to R...
Ann-Marie
Mark
Diane
Martin

A trick question Cumbrians love to ask visitors:
How many lakes are there in the Lake District?

Front...
Gene's mam
Rear...
Skiddaw

So, when is a lake not a lake? When it's not Bassenthwaite!
(Bet you were going to say, "When it's frozen!")

Answer: One! All the others are meres, waters, or tarns.
So what's the one?
Bassenthwaite Lake,
of course!

These pictures of frozen Bassenthwaite, taken 29th December 1995, show "Gene On Ice" as in ice skates, with Martin keeping up skateless!

There are photos to prove it. She was then 75 and, if it was 27th, had exactly 13 years left to live. Isn't it nice to enjoy life and simply not know the future?
Incidentally, if you really want to irritate a Cumbrian, say something irritating..like
"Lake Windermere"! It's tautological, so normally you'd be wasting words and breath. But you wouldn't be if you were intent on irritating a Cumbrian!

Left to Right :Gene's mam, Gene, Diane in1995

on Caermote Hill. Notice how Diane has the best sledge! Typical!

Sledging isn't a feet feat, it's more of a bum feat, so putting it in "Foot Club" is stretching a point a bit! Martin was there in 1995, but no photos of him, poor lad! Never got a look in, it seems! But below he is present further back in the past. Caermote 1991, 11th February, Gene's 48th birthday. Evidence of Global
Warming? You'd better believe it! Just look how deep the snow was in '91 compared with '95! So it's possible to say with absolute certainty that the Romans, who had a fort at the foot of Caermote Hill, (Martin is heading straight for it in photo 2), sledged here, though not on blue, or red plastic, on Gene's -1743rd birthday, or near enough, (with absolute certainty), and enjoyed, (by extrapolation), 3 inches multiplied by 1791 divided by 5, then by 12, that's 89½ feet of snow, give, or take half an inch! Must have been a bit nippy up the toga! But, compared with inventing a word for "sledge", declining it as a noun, conjugating it as a verb and pronouncing it minus Cumbrian inflexion, (Cicero, for the use of....yes, yes! Gene knows Cicero wasn't contemporaneous with sledge invention! But does it really matter?), it must have been a doddle, equivalent to realising that "toga" is an anagram of "goat", but not in Latin!

Skiddaw

Binsey

M

D

M

D

SNEW

Eh? South, North, East, West? No, Snew! In line with trendy tendency to form potty past tenses; "dove" for "dived", "snook" for "sneaked" and the like, Gene has just invented "snew" for "snowed"! OK? Well, scarlet rag fragments snagged randomly chimney-side, as Gene's Santa Claw (sic) authentication attempt, didn't require it to have snew, (didn't fool Martin either!), but Gene's dad's night-shift enabled fake reindeer hoof-prints did! So it snew in Hull on at least one Crimbo Eve. "Never known it snow here!" claimed 80-odd year resident, Mrs Owen, as she watched, (with lodger Gene, in teacher training digs) the forecast, 8 hours before he, (G), found his bike buried, to prove it snew in Crewe! But Gene never knew how much it snew until he went to live in Barnard Castle. Because no matter how much it snew in Hull, or Crewe, (which it tends not to), to ski needs it to have snew at a decent angle, (gravity-assist for the purpose of). Upper Teesdale has angle, aspect, altitude...if it snew, good chance! And it did (snew)!

This is the cover of the first issue of Glaxo Ski Club's magazine.
It's pretty unexciting to look at! Mostly empty and white..to represent the purity of driven snow? Nah! It was cheap to produce! Anyway,
Gene isn't going to waste all this blankness, he's going to plaster
purple text all because he
over the place, once was the
feeling free to do so...................................................... Editor!

Glaxo Ski Club was a section of The Glaxo Sports and Social Club based at Glaxo Laboratories in Barnard Castle, County Durham. The skiing site used in
the '60's and '70's was an area known as Yad Moss, or Harwood Common.

Yad Moss, just north of the road summit between Middleton-in-Teesdale and Alston,
lies entirely above
2000 feet, making
the chances of
snow cover good.
Gene was a member of Glaxo Ski Club for several years and served on the Committee.

This bit hasn't copied well. It says, Vol. 1 Number 1 June 1969.
Gene has the first 7 issues.

Teesdale Ski Club goes back pre-war. Catterick (Army) was then recent ('68-'69), their indoor artificial ski slope used by all to advantage, summer and thin winter alike. If photos from this era exist they're buried at Croft Farm, though not in snow! But Gene has evidence for winter variability in the North East Ski Association Open Slalom records. A 5 foot thick ski-able patch of 1969's snow survived on Great Dun Fell on 21st June, in which year the first NESA races were held at Allenheads, after two cancellations for too much of the stuff! Glaxo hosted the event in 1970, (March 1st), Yad Moss being about the only site with enough. Even then conditions on the day were awful, wind, rain and thick mist, but Gene, after only one season, entered and is rather proud of his achievement. Wearing No. 10 (Yellow) he fell on his first run (74.4s.), then made 66.1s. next go! He came 14th and was faster than all comers from Swaledale Outdoor Centre, Durham University Ski Club, and The Scottish Ski Club and all comers female too! Glaxo won the Ladies' event, and came second to Newcastle University in the Men's Team. Post mid '70's Gene's life started to get snow-cover-independent Pardoe-modified. No more skiing until...

1

2

Aiguille de
Trélatête

Aiguille des
Glaciers

staff, Mr. Gibb, hurt his back and couldn't go. Gene's casual, "Well, I can ski." to Mr. Gibb, who by chance was Gene's Chemistry Department colleague, led to the substitution seen in Photo 2, (Oh! What a give-away!)
It led too to Gene becoming a runner. Well, exaggeration maybe, but, rotund from sloth and Christmas cake, and with minimum time to turn fat into fit, Gene took to intense jogging. Once in Italy he took to intense falling, semi-deliberately at first. He'd never been on a chair-lift before and was juggling, sticks under arm, gloves in teeth, with lift pass, money and wallet, when the chair snook, sorry, sneaked up behind and whisked him aloft. Seconds later the Earth appeared, perilously far below, between hopelesly dangling skis and the safety bar wasn't noted until the up journey's end presented a new problem; how to get off! With the correct terminus missed and a U-turn approaching Gene elected to jump and after several thousands of feet landed in a fortunately placed heap of soft snow, in front of a tittering collection of pupils! Gene's mounting collection of bruises thereafter were "a good sign," according to the instructor. "Shows you're pushing yourself!" Felt more like being pushed, but fortunately it was the left eye that took most of the stick, because, once well on

its blackening way, it was augmented one evening by a thumping tumble during mulled-wine-assisted ice skating, which enabled Gene, sporting a patch, to attend the fancy dress do as a pirate! One fall was caused by a mouse* Gene ski-ed over, pressing it into the snow. Actually it was the mouse's welfare that did it. Gene looked round to check and, as it popped back out unscathed....don't look round while skiing! *Could have been a vole, hard to say at 60mph!

36 pupils went to Italy
6 are in this
photo.