Dark days in Leyburn….
Dan Harden, still faithfully garnering the blog amid the Kansas wheat belt, writes of the steady spread of 5s and 3s over there – arithmetical progression, it might be supposed.
The number of first-time paticipants that get enthused about the game amazes me” says Dan. “The acorn is not yet a tree but it has surely sprouted and is doing well.”
They gather in Johnny’s Tavern West, some even abstaining from alcohol (not recommended) in order to retain focus. One chap may have been missing this week, however, having headed to Texas with his dominoes to watch tonight’s total eclipse of the sun.
“Seems he needed to arrive three days early to stake out his viewing position” says Dan. “What does he do for three days? He’s going to be hustling games of 5s and 3s. Thank you for planting the seed.”
*All this is slightly coincidental because only last week in a railway book I came across the pic atop the blog of some of the crowds at Leyburn station in Wensleydale, June 29 1927, on the occasion of the first total solar eclipse visible in England since 1724.
“Your only chance until 1999” claimed the LNER – how do the star gazers know these things? – the line of totality spreading pretty much coast to coast across part of northern England.
You can tell it was a midsummer day in these parts by the number of top coats and mufflers.
Neither that the total eclipse was due to last just 23 seconds, nor that it was timed at 6 20am when most were normally still abed, proved a deterrent. An estimated three million people headed for the dales and similarly unenlightened areas.
Around 200,000 crowded Hartlepool, it was reported, half of them on Seaton Carew beach. Eight special trains arrived in Richmond alone, every available bed booked since February, while the eminent astronomer Dr WJS Lockyer had for two weeks bagged his place atop a nearby hill, accompanied by two friends, a dog called Hickboo and a very large camera.
High on a wall in Richmond, an AA plaque (above) still marks the occasion.
In Leyburn, as elsewhere, crowds were restless. “From the way in which the different amusements of the town were patronised, it was obvious that a fair proportion of the populace did not go to bed at all” the Darlington and Stockton Times reported.
They were to be disappointed, the great moment obscured by what someone called a caprice of clouds. “The great trek was in vain” said a headline in the D&S Times, beneath the perhaps predctable headline “The eclipse eclipsed”.
The paper was able to report, however – and with thanks to Mr Chris Lloyd – that a cow being milked in Nunthorpe inexplicably went dry for the 23 seconds of totality. A chap in Hartlepool was so affected by the “eerie darkness” that he broke down in tears.
“A beautiful fiasco” said Dr Lockyer, down from on high. It’s to be hoped that the gentleman in Texas fared rather better tonight, and that he won his 5s and 3s.
*The brainless Britannia B team, with whom for countless years I have knocked about, are at the Model T in Darlington this evening in the last 16 of the league cup.
The Model T was opened in 1968. Darlington’s links with the automotive industry, or with Mr Henry Ford may only be imagined.
Though the evening is overcast, the skies heavy, it may not be said that there is nothing new under the sun. We won.
*An eye on the upcoming bicentenary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, I’ve spent a couple of agreeable hours with Jane Hackworth-Young, great great granddaughter of Timothy Hackworth, the Shildon-based locomotive pioneer.
Formidably bright, Jane runs a bridge club. She paints, gardens, reads voraciously, fervently champions the cause of Shildon and of her ancestor and, in the Barnard Castle and District league, plays 5s and 3s.
They’ve been promoted and won their own cup. “I think we’re quite good” says Jane, though in Barney there’s a crucial difference. In Darlington they don’t allow women.
*Former Bedlington Terriers vice-chairman John Garbutt, who lives near Newcastle, may not be much of a hand at the dominoes but reports that he has taken enthusiastically to sequence dancing. “I traverse the city half a dozen times a week, chasing the dance scene. When our generation turn their toes up, I reckon that sequence dancing will also” he forecasts.
In the meantime, he pitched up at a tea dance in Whitley Bay where he spotted the familar face of former Look North sports reporter Mark Tulip, who though retired still crops up occasionally on the telly.
Mark’s a very tall lad and, presumably, has very big feet. Tiptoeing comes to mind.
Grass Routes 