Tag: book-reviews

Rallying support for Heartbeat jamboree

It’ll be emotional when I am reunited with my dad’s old Jaguar at the Heartbeat Vehicle Rally in June. I’ve not seen it since 2017. If you’d like to help me by sponsoring the event in some way, please get in touch with this paper or through my web page.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for information about a needlework sampler that featured York Minster, as well as information about a group of girls creating samplers around the village of Lastingham. I’d been contacted by Sarah Duce whose great aunt Hannah Stonehouse completed a different sampler in 1808 and which was one of four about which Sarah was trying to find out more. “I believe one might have been by a Mary Wilson who was born around 1791 in Hartoft, and wondered if there might have been some sort of connection…I believe my Great Grandma x5, Sarah Harding (nee Smith), may have been the teacher of these girls…She was schoolmistress of Lastingham following the death of her schoolmaster husband from consumption at the young age of 30.”

The Minster sampler was sewn by a girl called Ann Raw and I wondered if she had actually been sitting in front of the building to create it. Reader Gillian Hunt contacted me to say: “The York Minster sampler – same motif on another sampler, which suggests the girls were following a design by someone else – maybe by their needlework teacher?” It means they probably did it in a classroom setting.

Gillian specialises in researching samplers like this, and two years ago was very helpful in relation to helping me understand the significance of the needlework motifs on one that hung in my mum’s kitchen by a young girl called Hannah Raw. Is she related to Ann Raw? We don’t yet know.

Gillan informed me in 2023: “Hannah’s sampler has two sets of initials after the date – MR and what looks like ER…If ER is in dark thread, they are most likely to have died before Hannah completed her sampler.”

Gillian discovered that the initials represented Hannah’s parents Matthew and Ellis Raw. Ellis’s initials were in a dark thread and further research confirmed she had indeed passed away. Matthew Raw died a few years after the sampler was created, when Hannah was still a teenager.

Gillian’s help, among others, led us to being able to fill out much of Hannah’s life story. Best of all, we found a living relative, a direct descendant of Hannah’s brother John Raw. My ultimate goal is to find a living relative of Hannah herself.

On another note, I took a trip up to Goathland last weekend to meet the posse who are responsible for organising the annual Heartbeat Vehicle Rally. This year’s event is scheduled for the weekend of 27th and 28th June.

The rally has boomed over the years, and last time attracted around 6,000 visitors over the two days. They flocked to the village to meet star guests and to study the collection of wonderful vintage vehicles, some of which appeared in the TV show. The local businesses do a roaring trade, with hotels, B&Bs and holiday homes fully booked many months in advance. The local cafes and shops are overflowing, and with the car parks bursting at the seams, some prefer to arrive by steam on the North York Moors Railway. It brings a huge financial boost into the area, and yet those who organise it don’t make a penny from it (And, for the record, neither does my family!).

It’s a truly wonderful, family occasion, and those involved in its planning put in hours of hard work, as well as their own money, all for the love of Heartbeat. Any profits raised are donated to Goathland Primary School.

As the event grows in size, the work and challenges, both financial and practical, increase. This year we are looking for sponsorship to help with the mounting costs involved. Please contact me via this paper or my web page if you are willing to help. I will also be knocking on a few business doors over the coming weeks as the event looms.

This year there is one particular vehicle that I cannot wait to see. It is my dad’s very own vintage Mark II Jaguar. That car had been part of our family since I was a child, but sadly we had to sell it in the wake of his death in 2017. I thought I’d never see it again. But now it’s been found and is coming to the rally.

It’s going to be one heck of an emotional reunion!

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me using the ‘Contact’ button on the top right.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 27th  and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 25th March 2026

Permission to be curmudgeonly

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Reader Deborah Steed went to school with my late sister Tricia, whose anniversary it is this week (8th January)

 

I have received some interesting feedback following my pre-Christmas columns about the annoying misuse of certain words, as well as ‘autocorrect’ changing words into something you don’t mean at all.

A reader I only know as ‘vibrant50770a0070’, who contacted me through my countrymansdaughter.com webpage, stated: “One of my annoyances is the use by weather forecasters (and others) of ‘A month’s worth of rain fell.’ What is a month’s worth of rain? Surely the correct use of the English language would be to say ‘The equivalent of a month’s rain fell’. The spelling and use of words in the English language is now appalling, as can be found in such places as Facebook, etc. I am a retired police officer, now in my nineties, so I think I can be permitted to be a curmudgeonly old codger, but I think that the decline of the English language over the years is very sad.”

Having achieved that significant age milestone ‘vibrant50770a0070’ has the right to be as curmudgeonly as he wants. Having said that, what some see as a ‘decline’ in the English language, others see as ‘evolution’. I’m still not sure upon which side of the fence I fall.

Monica Gantz, a writer and blogger who lives in the USA, also contacted me through my webpage saying: “Autocorrect has gotten out of control. It used to be spot on with its correction. I admit to typing and almost hitting ‘send’ when I decide to re-read my post and in horror, similar to your examples, find that autocorrect substituted a terrible word in my sentence. It’s a great reminder to RE-READ before pressing ‘send’. 

I read my copy countless times before sending it, only to discover that when it is printed, a silly typo has slipped through. It drives me nuts but happens because my brain tricks me into seeing what I want, rather than what is actually on the page. A regular one is ‘their’ when I mean ‘there’. I know which is right of course, but sometimes in the speed of typing, I pop the wrong one in. I will have read over it  lots of times without spotting the error, only to see it once the final version is out in public. It makes me so cross with myself!

You might recall that in my Christmas column I brought up the fact that a common festive ‘autocorrect’ error is spelling ‘Santa’ as ‘Satan’ and it jogged a couple of regular readers’ memories about taking children to see the big man in the red suit.

Clare Proctor, who works at various properties owned by the National Trust, said: “Having observed my colleagues grapple with children (and, even worse, parents) whilst corralling them to visit the Santa’s grotto we used to do at work, Satan might not have always been a mistake!”

And on a similar theme Janet Pearce added that she had a bad experience sitting on an elderly priest’s lap as a child. “I did not want my children sitting on old strangers’ laps! Satan seems quite appropriate.” I can relate to that because as a very young child similar was done to me on a number of occasions by an elderly neighbour. It was only as an adult that I realised that what he had done was wrong. It is such a shame that something that should be a magical experience for our children has been tainted by a few disgusting men taking advantage of innocence.

Before Christmas I also wrote about the fact that on the first anniversary of my friend Ian’s mum’s death, we thought it hilarious when he’d received a message from a close friend. She had been crushed with embarrassment when she realised she’d written ‘Thinking about your dead mum’ instead of ‘dear mum’.

Deborah Steed said the story made her giggle because it reminded her of an occasion where she had met up with some old classmates. Her friend was grieving the recent loss of her pet dog and said to Deborah: “Now I understand why you didn’t feel like coming to the last school reunion after your dog had just died.”

She was mortified when Deborah said: “No, that was my dad. The dog is still alive and kicking.”  

Coincidentally, Deborah went to school with my sister Tricia, who died seven years ago this week, which is a great excuse to use the picture accompanying this column. I’ll leave the closing words to Deborah:

“Thinking of Tricia as I read this. She was a lovely girl.”

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me via the ‘Contact’ tab at the top right of this page.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 10th Jan and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 8th Jan 2025