On Ilkla Moor bah tat! (Ilkley Gazette)

Name: SueMagee

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Product:	Ilkley Gazette
Date:	15/06/01 (1401 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Local

Disadvantages: Parochial

"Where hasta bin since I saw thee? On Ilkla Moor bah tat!" (Where have you been since I last saw you? On Ilkley Moor without a hat!) Round here people do talk like that, so the first thing to realise about "The Ilkley Gazette" is that for those born and bred here it is largely, but not entirely, written in a foreign language. Equally for incomers it is largely, but not entirely, written in another foreign language.

Think of a triangle. The bottom corners are Leeds and Bradford. The top is Harrogate. In the middle is Ilkley, but Ilkley has nothing to do with any of these places, for Leeds and Bradford are Airedale, but still West Yorkshire, whilst Harrogate is Nidderdale AND North Yorkshire. Ilkley is Wharfedale, and the Gazette is about Wharfedale.

Most local papers cover an area which spreads out from the centre, and ends up roughly circular, but this is a valley, and The Gazette covers a strip approximately 15 miles long, but only about two or three miles wide. The disadvantage of this is that the people at one end are largely foreigners to the people at the other.

"Do yer tek the Guzette?" people will ask. The Gazette is not bought; it is taken, like medicine. Thursday is Gazette day. Headline this week is about the death of a 72-year-old man in a nursing home fire. Some 42 column inches are devoted to this, including a picture of the nursing home. This man is important. At the end of the article we know only his name, his age and that he had no known close relatives, but his death has come at a time when there is a proposal to reduce the number of fire appliances in Ilkley from two to one. The headline could well have read "Unknown man obliges in fight to keep fire engine". The front page also covers the aftermath of the General Election. A woman has had to pay £2 to park her car whilst she went to vote. The fact that she parked in an area clearly marked "For Residents
Only" is not allowed to spoil a good story.

Turn the page. Now we come to the reason we all take the Gazette; the Notices. As you get older the births are likely to be grandchildren for friends, but the deaths are likely to mean more. Kevin's Dad's Acknowledgement is in. Who's Kevin? Well, Kevin is a secret shared by a number of ladies in the village. You know those jobs that need doing round the house? Yes, I thought you would, and you know the response you get when you suggest they might be done? "You don't want me to do it NOW do you?" Oh good, so it isn't just me! Well, Kevin comes round and for a very reasonable sum will do anything from replacing roof tiles, to a bit of fencing, to tap washers. He always has "a bit of summat as'll do it fine. Don't be spending money." No I can't give you his phone number: that's only given to people we know will treat him well, and he doesn't travel far. He once worked in Bradford, but didn't like it.

Well, Kevin's Dad died, and his "Notice" was in last week, and this week the family are thanking everyone for how nice they've been. What was missing was what we knew about Kevin's Dad. He used to work at the mill in the village, and once saved a lot of people when there was a fire. Even the mill owner wrote him a letter to say "thank you". Kevin made him a frame last Christmas so he could hang it on the wall. He was "reet chuffed". The "In Memoriams" always make good reading too - you know - "The words are few but mean a lot, to say, dear Dad, you ain't forgot". It isn't in this week, but it will be, it will be.

Now the international news: "Help the Nepalese says charity worker". The most important facts are presented first. The charity worker is the brother of a local priest, and is therefore Almost One of Us. I'm interested
in this article, as I have a daughter living in Kathmandu. A few weeks ago she suffered having someone she knew, but found hard going, apparently murdering a lot of other people she knew, but found hard going. From what I know of Nepal the article was very fair, bringing out the corruption, the instability and the poverty. It was far more balanced than a lot of the over-hyped space filling that went on in the national newspapers at the time.

Foot and Mouth, as you might expect, takes a lot of column inches. I was walking the dogs this morning when a man said to me "Yer cun see yit". He hasn't got second sight, and he didn't mean that he could see the disease, but we were looking up the valley, and we could see where the disease is. When most of the country has finally breathed out we've got fear. Ilkley Moor is home to thousands of sheep and there are cattle on the lower slopes. One of the cows in a nearby field has an uncanny knack of being able to escape. She's apparently called "Margaret", but those of us who have encountered her unexpectedly, lurking behind a bush, call her "Bl**dy Buttercup". She's part of a herd that's been built up over generations, and I can't bear the thought of not being frightened by Margaret again. The coverage in the paper is remarkably balanced. The local tourist trade is grinding to a halt, local shows are cancelled, and even churches are closing their doors. There is disinfectant on roads to the Moor, but it's only on the letters page that there is fulmination against the people who thoughtlessly (or otherwise) go onto the Moor, despite the warnings not to, and put stock at risk.

Yes, the letters page - well, what can you say? Some people use it as a platform for self-publicity, and there are a couple of people who seem to be in there pretty regularly, to the extent that you wonder if they're OK if they're not there for a week or t
wo, and I do get annoyed by the "Please support our charity" letters from outside the area. There's been a useful campaign recently to get something done about a local road that's being dangerously used as a short-cut by the boy racers, and it looks as though it will be successful. It's a useful vent for people's feelings, even if you do, sometimes, get the feeling that you've read the same letter, in a different form, last week.

I love reading the planning applications. This week someone wants to erect a kitchen door. Why? I ask myself. Where? How's he managed so far? There's always a good local feature, although I have to wonder at the common sense of the person who selected for this week's feature a wonderful description of a walk across Ilkley Moor, which would be illegal because of the Foot and Mouth crisis. I always do the crossword. The prize is only £5, and I've never won, but somehow it seems important to do it. I have to confess to not being a fan of the sports pages, but that's only because I prefer to read about the national events if I'm going to read about sport. There's all the minutiae of local life; "Thieves stole an umbrella stand worth £14.95 from a house in..." and "There was a successful meeting of the Ladies Circle on..."

One of the best bits comes as a separate section, and that's the "Property for Sale". No, I don't want to move house, and nor do most of the other people who read it. We simply want to be nosey without being seen to be. "Well, I wouldn't call that a modern kitchen, would you? When you open the cupboard doors they fall off!" "Well-stocked garden. Well-stocked with weeds!" "Call that a conservatory? I call it a lean-to!" Sounds like Kevin will never be short of work doesn't it?

UPDATE

Margaret survived as did the remainder of the herd, and we
all breathed a sigh of relief despite the fact that I got a very nasty shock as I was walking the dogs last night! Ilkley did lose it's second fire appliance though and I stll haven't won the crossword competition!

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