The importance of Northamptonshire's libraries

"The arts are essential to any complete national life.  The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them... ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due."

Winston Churchill said this, and it seems particularly apt with the proposed cuts to Northamptonshire's libraries.

Now I can't imagine people are going to take to the streets and march about a library shutting, or chain themselves to the gates in front, but truthfully we should care just as much about this as more high profile spending cuts because this is just the start.

Northamptonshire hasn't been fairly funded for a while now we're told, and despite our councillors and MPs lobbying the Government for more money none has so far been forthcoming.

While the current national administration ties itself in knots over Brexit, our county is struggling to balance its books and - as usual - it's the ordinary people who will suffer.

Libraries are important, particularly if you haven't got much disposable income.  Growing up, I relied on Kettering and Corby Libraries in particular for reference books for my homework.

While I appreciate we now live in a very different world and youngsters use the internet for much of their homework research, there are some people for whom the library is an important lifeline.

Parents/carers take their children in there for reading sessions, and who can dispute the value of ensuring the next generation has free, easy access to books and can read?  The library van which visits the villages is a popular service, particularly with people who struggle to get into town for various reasons.

Reading is a vital skill, books are still important, and a society without either is missing something fundamental.  Do we really want our county to be devoid of such basics? 

Our county's current slogan is 'Let Yourself Grow' - if these cuts are allowed to happen, perhaps 'let yourself go' would be more appropriate?

Science homework

A while ago, while my daughter was still at primary school, I wrote about how challenging I found her homework.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, I can report that this gets much, much worse at secondary school level.

A good example - science homework - construct a molecule model or a DNA helix.  What?  How?  We didn't know where to start.  We turned to the great oracle of our times and 'Googled' it.

Once we knew what a molecule model looked like, daughter chose titanium nitrate to construct (not sure why!), and we decided to head to The Range.  The Range will have all we need, we said confidently.

The Range did indeed come up trumps with polystyrene balls of various sizes, plus cocktail sticks.  It failed on a larger size ball though, needed for the central component of the model, so we bought a polystyrene rose bud (who even knew they existed?), and then husband shaved it until it was spherical - we're nothing if not resourceful.

Then daughter sat, for most of a Saturday afternoon, colouring in the polystyrene balls, while trying to stop the ink coming off on the carpet and warding off the dog who thought the balls looked like great fun and he'd really like to carry one off and chew it thoughtfully in front of the fire.

When she'd finished, and the cocktail sticks were also partly coloured in, the titanium nitrate was constructed and indeed looked just like the one Google had shown us.

It took pride of place on the dining room table so it didn't get damaged before it was due to be handed in, and it was out of reach of the nosy Labrador who found it all terribly intriguing.  Carrying it on the bus to school was tricky, I hear, but thanks to a large bag-for-life it survived the journey relatively intact.

I then heard that some people had just bought kits from Amazon and handed those in, but that's not quite the spirit is it?  There's nothing like a bit of 'Blue Peter' ingenuity - now where's my sticky-back plastic?!

Strictly vs. The X Factor

Much like the rest of the country I suspect, our family Saturday nights are spent juggling Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, with husband often heading off elsewhere muttering about car shows on Quest - sound familiar to anyone else?

But what I like best about Strictly are the people who obviously have no previous dance training - step forward Ruth Langsford and Northamptonshire's own Rev Richard Coles - who have fun and give it their best shot.

OK, so they're not the best dancers and truthfully are in a similar vein to John Sergeant, Ann Widdicombe and Ed Balls, but they train hard and enjoy themselves, which is surely what it is all about.  In my mind, they embody the spirit of Strictly.

What about Debbie McGee - how amazing is she, who knew she was such a good dancer?  Yoga and pilates are said to be the secret of her suppleness - if so, find me a class and sign me up please!

If I was a betting woman (which I'm not), my money would be on Aston Merrygold or Alexandra Burke to win though.  They are, to borrow a phrase from Craig, 'fabulous, darling!'

But for sheer guts and determination, I'm going to be cheering on Ruth and Debbie now our Richard has sadly been eliminated.

As for The X Factor, we're still watching it but I loathe the bear-pit that is the Six Chair Challenge.

It's bordering on cruel, and while we do our best to encourage our young people to be kind, this is the antithesis of that message, with the audience baying as to who should be thrown off their seats to make room for the singer of their choice.

Not that I'm sure Simon Cowell cares or will ever read this, but I believe a rethink of the current format is needed.

I'll concede that it's maybe an age thing, but a bit like swapping from Radio One to Radio Two at a certain age, I've found myself making a similar migration from The X Factor to Strictly Come Dancing.

Air Ada - Northamptonshire expressions

Local dialects and expressions are probably something we don't spend much time thinking about.

But the BBC recently ran a project in which they encouraged poets to write pieces celebrating words specific to the areas from which they came.

'Mardy' was the word for the East Midlands, of which Northamptonshire is a part.  Mardy is one of those words that I didn't think was specific to this area, but apparently further south they don't use it.  Just in case you're in any doubt, it means sulky or moody.

Some of you may remember 'Air Ada', the classic cartoon which ran in this paper for many years, and was packed with Northamptonshire sayings and pronunciations.

I've been thinking about words that I think are Northamptonshire-isms and I've picked my favourites - I'm hoping Ada would approve:

M'duck - a friendly moniker, suitable for people of all ages, and particularly helpful if you can't remember somebody's actual name;

Jitty - a small alley between rows of houses.  Sometimes used in the expression 'he/she couldn't stop a pig in a jitty' if the person is bow-legged;

Keck - I never knew the real name for keck until recently, it was something that grew in hedgerows and of which my childhood rabbit was particularly partial; its real name is apparently cow parsley.

Another local word I particularly like is mackle - it means to try and repair something using items easily at hand, although I tend to use it in a culinary sense (as in 'I've mackled a meal together').

You don't have to travel far to be confronted by new words either.  Heading over the border to University in Leicester I was confronted by 'cobs'.  Until this point I believed a cob to be a breed of horse, but over there it's a bread roll, as explained to me by my friend who hailed from near Wolverhampton, where good things were always described as bostin'.

What are your favourite Northamptonshire words and sayings?