The whole story is based in the area where my sister lives up in Yorkshire, but in a village a lot smaller than the one she lives in. I was picturing somewhere a lot like the one down the road from where we went camping the other year.  It certainly helped me visualise everything.  Anyway, here is what I wrote about it in full:

This is a very clever book which works a lot better than I thought it would. The story is told entirely through the medium of a bundle of letters stolen from a postbox and recovered, along with a covering letter from one policeman to another and a couple of letters from the other policeman at the end.

The point of the book is not really about the postbox theft or who committed the crime, but rather about what the letters reveal about life in a small West Yorkshire village and the people who inhabit it.  In such a small village gossip is rife and so several characters crop up in different letters and also write their own.

The fascination is in seeing the same events described from different perspectives and with different prejudices and the writer has used the format well to wring every last drop of dramatic irony out of those events.

One advantage of the form is that with the changing styles and voices, if you find your interest flagging you know the next chapter is going to bring a change of pace.

Towards the end I was starting to wonder how on Earth the story was going to be resolved, half afriad that there was going to be no satisfying conclusion, so I was delighted to find a proper ending, even if one or two mysteries remain. We never did get to the bottom of the dog poo question for example – although I have my own theory.

Some of the letters seem unfeasibly long, particularly the first covering letter, but then it is fiction so some artistic licence is allowed, and one of the longer letters is an absolute comedy tour de force – the one that describes the charity auction and all its disastrous consequences.  That letter would stand alone as brilliantly funny short story, although then you would miss the extra layers added by subsequent letters – and the clues leading to the final resolution.

By the end I wanted to know more about the eccentric inhabitants of Burley Cross and would happily read a sequel set there, whether in the form of another epistolary novel or a more straightforward story.

Just to show that Skuds isn’t the only one who can use song titles for his posts….

We have been a touch busy recently and, among other things, we spent a very rainy Saturday last week helping the Huddersfield Friends of the Earth Group in their protest against EU Biofuels targets.

(I’m holding the % and a T, Rob has T and I – luckily the driving rain and wind stopped long enough for the photocall!)

We were asking passers-by to sign post cards asking their MEPs to vote against a legally binding target for Biofuel use.  The problems this will cause are many: deforestation, habitat loss, lack of food availability in the developing world, but the one that got most cards signed was, inevitably, closer to home. More grain was harvested last year than ever before but, because so much was used for Biofuels, the cost of bread and animal feed has actually increased. Tell people that Biofuels are partly to blame for the cost of their weekly shop and they were queueing in the rain to sign up!

Even if your local Friends of the Earth group hasn’t organised any postcard signings or other events you can still let your MEP know how you feel via the FoE website http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/biodiversity/press_for_change/biofuels/index.html the link is at the bottom of the page.  I sent off my email and even got a couple of replies. One was a fairly measured reply from one of the Conservative MEPs and the other was, well, from UKIP.  I nearly coughed up my own skull at this reply since it was basically a rant about how corrupt and undemocratic the European parliament was. I’m not sure if I’m brave enough, or stupid enough, to reply to this guy but what I really want to know is what are UKIP doing getting themselves elected as MEPs?  I assume he draws whatever allowances he is entitled to so this must, in UKIP’s mind make him corrupt, and since he must have been elected I would like to know how much he paid for the votes he got (since that must be his proof of the ‘undemocratic’ dig). Mind you these guys believe that wind turbines will alter prevailing wind currents in our climate so I don’t think I will take their advice on renewable energy….

It wasn’t the best of weather, although obviously drier than last year, but there was a good crowd. We had never been to Peel Park before but getting on the bus and following the large groups of people towards the men with huge bunches of balloons seemed to be a good plan.  The huge bunches of balloons are everywhere – all inflatable Tiggers and Stitches, Disney really is a universal language, although I guess inflatable Bollywood stars might be a bit off.  There were three stages and we looked in on all of them through the afternoon. The Mango stage seemed to have the more community-based acts, we saw a dance group from Scotland, and the Sunrise stage had the big names. I think. We hadn’t really heard of anyone but the crowd obviously were seeing their favourites – they were applauding and yelling for particular songs as they started and when the guy in the picture above came out in a sparkly silver and black tunic it showed that he must have been wearing a famous costume from a Bollywood film – the crowd went wild. That’s another thing we must really get round to doing – the local Cineworld always has the latest Bollywood blockbusters on. (Although, to put it in perspective we still haven’t seen the new Indiana Jones….)

Finally we found the World stage – far more our speed. We saw a duo playing tabla and sitar, wandered off to find food and managed to miss the steel band, and then got back in time for the blind sitar player.  It had cooled down a bit by then so we got to cuddle up and listen. The oddest thing was that where the other stages had been filled with young British Asian audiences we ended up in a tent with all the middle-aged white hippy types. Home at last! (Actually there were a few non-white faces, a few africans and a small group of Sikh lads)  The main reason I couldn’t  stick with the Sunrise tent though was a combination of dance music and overpowering aftershave – its a good job I’m not in my 20′s and looking for love anymore: I think I’m allergic to young men….

All in all a really good day. We are hoping to take a stall along next year for Friends of the Earth – could be needed as just about every food stall was using polystyrene plates and we didn’t see a single recycling bin…

We were up there for the half-term break, and travelled up early on the Sunday. The idea was to avoid making the journey when everyone else was on the roads and that worked OK. The M1 was fairly quiet going up there, although by the time we got past Leicester it was very busy going South – chock full of coaches from Leeds and Doncaster heading for the League One play-off final at Wembley.

We made good time, and found the camp site we were after at about mid-day. It was on the top of a hill on the edge of the moors near Bingley, and it was windy. We had thought we were lucky with the weather: it was dry, which is always a bonus when thinking about pitching a tent. Unfortunately it was more than a little windy generally and blowing up a gale on top of that hill. In fact it was too windy to even get the tent up, and we gave up after two hours of fighting with it and considered ourselves lucky to not end up inadvertantly hang-gliding across the moors.

So we crammed the tent back in the car and headed for our second choice campsite. The sat-nav sent us up a road that you wouldn’t really want to take a 4×4 up and where we were convinced that permanent damage had been done to the car, but eventually we found the right road. The site looked fine but it turned out to be full and we had to revert to plan C – visit the sister in Queensbury, scrounge tea and phone round some other sites. Most of the sites we called were full and the ones that had room admitted that they were in windy locations. One of them said they had a static caravan that had blown off it’s blocks but we were welcome to try putting a tent up if we wanted. We didn’t.

We ended up imposing on familial hospitality and staying the night, and on Monday we headed back to our second-choice campsite. We figured it would be quite sheltered in its valley location, and would have some room with people packing up after a bank holiday weekend, and we were right on both counts.

With only a little trouble from the wind we got the tent up and got ourselves settled in. The site is very peaceful due to a policy of not allowing cars onto the field – you have to park in the car park and carry everything to the site. The website said its a one-minute walk, but didn’t mention that it was down a very steep slope. After several trips up and down we were truly knackered.

To make matters worse, the toilet block is up by the car park so a real trek just to take a leak or have a shower. Chrystal came back from a visit and said she had spoken to Fiona, which confused us. It turns out that she said “the owner”, but his nickname for the week had already been fixed. Actually we found out that he was not the owner anyway as the site is owned by the council and he is part of their forestry department and manages the site for them.

The site – Jerusalem Farm – is in a nature reserve and is on the Calderdale Way so it gets a lot of people using the car park to then go off walking. The field itself is below the car park and has a river running along the edge of it. The site is more of a weekend campsite and so fairly quiet during the week. In fact on Wednesday night ours was the only tent in the whole field.

It really is a peaceful place, with the only drawback being that huge climb up to the toilets. There are picnic tables set into the ground and some paving slabs laid down for barbecues, a couple of sets of bins and a pair of taps and that is it as far as facilities go. With the river running through and lots of woodland walks there is plenty to do and see on the site – great for younger kids and anyone who doesn’t mind the climb up to the car park. A couple of local ducks soon introduced themselves and became regular visitors, calling round to see if we had any bread for them.

The noise of the river was confusing at first. Inside the tent it sounded like there was a gale blowing, but it was just rushing water. The noise was added to by owls at night. Its quite impressive how much noise a river that is only about 3 metres wide can make and I now wonder what it must be like to visit somewhere like Niagara Falls. It looks good in the photos, but I’m now sure nothing can do justice to the noise.

We spent the rest of Monday just settling in and relaxing, but on Tuesday we set off exploring and as it was raining by this time we headed for Leeds and all the indoor attractions there, starting with the Royal Armouries. Its a great museum, and being a national collection its free entry, but it is a bit specialised. There are suits of armour, guns, swords and other weapons and thats it for several floors. A fantastic place if you are really interested in weaponry but for the more casual visitor there is a feeling of “oh look – yet another sword”.

We were all impressed by the punt gun though. These things are huge, and look like they should be used for hunting rhinos or dinosaurs or something but are just for duck hunting – except they can get up to 50 ducks in a single shot. These guns were for people hunting for a living rather than for sport.

After the Armouries we headed across the river in the drizzle and looked around the city centre. Leeds is a very up-and-coming place, but not really our sort of place. New waterfront apartments are going up everywhere. On my single previous visit to Leeds there had been a surface car park and open space outside the Armouries museum – not there is a multi-storey and several apartment blocks on that space. The shopping centre is enormous, but filled with shops like Louis Vuitton that wouldn’t interest us at all even if we could afford them.

Later in the day we went into Halifax, just up the road from where we were staying, and found it much more to our liking. In fact it was a bit of a theme to the holiday that we liked all the H places – Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Haworth, Holmfirth, and I quite liked the look of Huddersfield too.

On Wednesday it was not raining so much but was very misty. We went off to Hebden Bridge where Jayne found more ducks to feed. A nice little town, with its canal and river, and dark satanic mills now converted, like most of them to pleasant apartments or craft workshops. We spent a fair amount of time in Hebden Bridge and had some decent hot sandwiches in a pub there. The pub was the White Swan. When I went off to search for the toilets I found signs for ‘cobs’ and ‘pens’…. not being Bill Oddie I still didn’t know which way to turn until I saw a picture of a bloke on one door.

After Hebden Bridge we headed on to Haworth, but didn’t stop there, and headed off across the moors. The scenery was probably spectacular but our visibility was down to only a few metres by now so we didn’t see much of it although it did make the reservoir we passed particularly atmospheric.

At the top of one hill, at a place called Scar Top, we saw a sign to a tea room and pulled over. It was actually a furniture shop with a tea room in it – but what a furniture shop! It was a lovely old building with fantastic fireplaces and lintels and three or four floors stuffed full of oak furniture and ornaments. The tea rooms were a couple of floors up, with a balcony that would have offered fine views on any other day.

Wednesday night the drizzle and mist were clearing up, and on Thursday everything was sunny and dry. So much so that we decided to go home early. We had intended to return on Friday morning, but figured that if the tent was all dried out on Thursday evening we would pack up and go rather than risk the weather turning and us having to pack a wet tent on Friday – also a drive home at night would be quicker due to the traffic.

For our last day we headed South a bit and fetched up at Sowerby Bridge, another pleasant town with a river and canal. Jayne fancied a canal boat trip and one was about to leave in ten minutes so we hopped on it. It was a one-hour trip but only over a very short distance: the boats mov slowly and there were two locks to go through each way.

After the boat trip we walked along the towpath for a bit and it only took about ten minutes to cover the length of the tour. We timed it so that we reached the first lock just as the next trip was going through so we were able to see it all working from the outside as well as inside. It was a great experience going through the lock – especially as it was only a narrow lock, the width of one boat.

To get back from Sowerby Bridge we took the scenic route across to Holmfirth, where we got out for a walk around. Not being fans of Last of the Summer Wine we didn’t hunt out locations from the TV series and had a snack in the Riverside Cafe instead of Sid’s Cafe.

When we got back to Jerusalem Farm there was the best news of the week. We were starting to pack up when ‘Fiona’ came past and stopped for a chat. In response to various subtle hints about what soft Southerners we are he offered to cart all our stuff up to the car park when he came round in his pickup truck to collect the rubbish bins. That was a real bonus – it would have been quite a few trips up and down to carry it all up there by hand. We think he may have been taking pity on us for the dreadful weather we had all week.

When we left the site on Thursday morning ours was the only tent there. When we returned in the afternoon there were at least half a dozen there and a couple more in the process of going up . Most were probably fairly local people who had been spending the half-term waiting for the weather to change so they could take the kids camping. It made us feel a bit better about going because if we stayed there might have been queues for the shower (singular) that night.

The journey home was smooth, and we got back before midnight after a week that was more relaxing that it should have been under the circumstances. Loads more photos on Flickr.

Last night a few of us who were visiting Doncaster were taken out for a meal in town.  After the meal we had a couple of drinks in a bar. After closing time we went on to an 80's club. When that turfed us all out after midnight I saw that it was right opposite the hotel I stayed in last week, where I was so pissed off by the racket from clubbers.

It was just a typical night out in Donny…  a girl had to be physically thrown out of the club when her swearing at her boyfriend escalated into broken beer glasses and thrown punches. When we came out there was a paramedics' car and two ambulances nearby.  They had not been called: they were just there as a pro-active measure.

The strange thing is that everyone was really friendly, in spite of the violence, and even that stayed confined to the couple involved.  It may have been loud, but it felt safe. In fact I did not see a single policeman at all.  The locals were perfectly happy to start conversations with total strangers, which is not always the case down South. 

And its not all stereotypical Northern grimness either. The bar we went to after dinner had been taken over by about 50 people who were having a latin ballroom dancing class.  I thought that dancing classes usually took place in community centres or hired function rooms, not in a public bar where anyone else can come in to watch.  They seemed to be enjoying themselves and bothered nobody, and nobody bothered them.

This one is outside the town centre, so there are no crowds of drunks outside in the early hours, nor booming nightclub music. It is also a larger, cleaner room with a smoke alarm installed.

On the negative side, being out of town there is nowhere to go, and no local shops to pick up a paper from. There is a large factory outlet place next door which all closes at 6, and a Toys R US.  More of a problem is that the room has no telephone, and no free wi-fi access, and of course no E4 so I couldn't watch next week's episode of Lost.

It is handy that I can just walk into work though, and brilliant just to be anywhere with a shower. Our bathroom is being done at the moment so we are without a shower there.

The journey up was even worse than last time.  Since there are no opening windows on the GNER trains I have to assume they have air conditioning, but it doesn't work very well at all.  When I reached Donny I caught a bus out to the hotel and that £1 bus journey was cooler and more pleasant than the £145 train journey.

Was it such a success that they have had to move to larger premises? Somehow I suspect not.

On the other hand, the combination does make some sense. I think that tanning studios and IT consultancies are both businesses which attract more than their fare share of cowboys who have heard that its a quick way to make big money – 25 years ago they would have been opening video rental shops.

[PS... welcome to visitors from the Ubuntu forums!   This is a real picture of a real place. I don't even know what significance of this is for you, so I wouldn't have bothered to make it up.]

The reason is that I have to be in our offices in Donny at 9:00 tomorrow for some training on a new switch we are having installed. (Thats a telephone switch AKA a PABX. Not a simple on/off switch. Even I can work one of those without training. As long as I have the manual)

I don't get to go to Yorkshire very often, which is surprising since our company has a main office here and my sister lives down the road in Bradford.  I quite like the place (Yorkshire. Not necessarily Doncaster) but have only been up here a few times in the last 5 or 6 years – a summer school in York with a day trip to Leeds, York for my sister's wedding and now Doncaster. I really should think about coming up here just for the hell of it one day.

If I do it will be somewhere a bit quieter than Donny!  The place has a bit of a reputation, and my colleagues enjoy coming up here as they can meet up with old railway mates and go out on the piss. As I don't have old railway mates and don't particularly enjoy drinking it does not have the same appeal for me.

I am in a hotel in the town centre. All the windows are wide open to try and let a breeze in, so I can hear the crowds yelling from the street, and the music from the nightclubs which are just over the road. And there is a bus route or 8 passing right outside. When I decide I want to sleep I will have a tough decision to make about the windows.

On the plus side, there is free wi-fi in the hotel room, but I am getting frustrated using a laptop. I don't like them at the best of times, but a company one with no Firefox…  but the real disappointment is that when the hotel advertised "Sky satellite TV free for your entertainment" it did not mention that this means a normal TV tuned into the 5 terrestrial channels, plus Sky One and Sky News. Not even a music channel.

This means no E4, which means I can't watch next week's episode of Lost!  What a bummer.