Woolies Window

Here in Barrow we had an old saying, usually said by folks who earnestly believed that they were in the right. The saying went "if that's true I'll show my arse in Woolworths window" or "if I don't keep my promise I'll show my bum in Woolworths window."
Well I guess that now that Our 99 year old Woolworth store on the Main Shopping street is finally closing it's doors (and windows) for good, folks are having to rush in there to fulfill their promise. Look closely at the photo of the storefront!

Go Invisible

It seems that for the bargain price of $24.95 I can buy the secret of invisibility. They assure me that it's not a toy or magic trick or even an illusion or ninja technique. Wow even the CIA and "foreign agencies" use it, I won't even have a shadow. What do you think, should I hurry and order it now! Mmm maybe not, if anyone else is tempted and buys it let me know if it works please. But remember folks "moral purposes only"

Driver From Hell

666

I see that a San Francisco cab driver has lost his appeal to change his medallion number from the 666 he was assigned.
Byrne, a 30-year veteran driver, was assigned No. 666 only last August, after another applicant refused to accept the number. Since then, sources said, Byrne has been involved in at least one accident -- even after taking the precaution of having the cab blessed at Mission Dolores.
A few years ago it is said, the cab held by medallion holder 666 "burned to a crisp on Good Friday ... and the only thing remaining after the fire were the numbers 666, visible in the rubble."
"The number 666 has been associated with evil and with Satan for hundreds of years. The number first appears in the Revelation of St. John the Divine. Revelation describes Armageddon and offers the number 666 as a method of recognizing the followers of 'the beast,' or evil.''
"Do you believe in the Mark of the Beast yourself he was asked?''. "No. But there is a lot of negative energy around that cab".
On the meeting agenda is a four-paragraph resolution explaining the problem and requesting that Medallion 666 be retired and that Medallion 1307 be issued as a replacement -- even though that number begins with the spooky digits "13."
Thomas George-Williams, chairman of the United Taxicab Workers union, said No. 666 has "quite a history" and that cabbies love to tell ghost stories about it between fares, but that the commission ought not to get involved in superstitions.
He said taxi drivers already must remember there is no 13th Avenue in San Francisco. The name of the thoroughfare between 12th and 14th avenues was long ago dubbed Funston Avenue, to keep Armageddon at bay.
"I think this is going to make the city look a little silly for taking it up,'' George-Williams said. "Where does it stop? I don't think the city needs to spend time getting involved in something like this.''
The debate was the best show to play City Hall in some time. It featured commissioners bickering good-naturedly with one another, the head of the cab drivers union arguing before the board with red horns on his head and several other cabbies pleading for common sense, a quality not always found in the stone building at Civic Center.
Commission President Paul Gillespie said he favored granting the request, "and hopefully we can do this quickly so we never have to deal with this again.''
But with the underworld, the Book of Revelation and the Mark of the Beast at stake, quickness was not to be. Six cabbies had something to say during public comment.
"How dare you take Lucifer's number away,'' said Thomas George-Williams, president of the cab drivers union, who was sporting the red horns. "This is a serious issue.''
A cabbie named Tom warned the commission that it was "opening a can of worms" and would soon be deluged with requests to retire other numbers. A cabbie named Barry pointed out that 666 was the address of SS Peter and Paul's Church on Filbert Street, an outfit not thought to be in Satan's pocket. A cabbie named Grasshopper said it was a "bad idea to get into mysticism and voodoo.''
"Where does it end?'' said Vice President Patricia Breslin. "I lived at an address of 666 and I did not go over to the dark side.''
Commissioner Malcolm Heinecke said he might approve the request if the commission decided to charge a "significant fee.'' Commissioner Ton Oneto pointed out that the number had been around for at least 30 years and San Francisco has somehow survived.
And then the clerk called for a formal vote, and the commission voted 5-1 to grant sympathy to the devil and keep No. 666 on the books. Only Gillespie -- who said he had once driven cab No. 666 himself and was versed with its implications -- voted to kick the number out.

Easter Eggstra

Does anyone remember the old local custom of displaying Easter eggs in the front window? On my travels this week I haven't seen any Barrow houses with eggs on show . A few years back most houses with children used to have eggs in the window, and if you were really posh they were Cadburys. A daft place to keep them really the chocolate used to melt but as I found out recently it was not as I thought to make the other kids jealous but has its origins in earlier customs. I had picked an elderly lady up and she explained to me that in earlier times before the chocolate egg they had Pasch or past eggs, which were hard boiled eggs which where dyed and painted. Before they were rolled down a hill(locally this was the Amphitheatre) in the traditional Easter Sunday pastime of paste egging they were displayed in the front window. She also told me that empty pace-egg shells must be crushed as it was believed that witches used them as boats (mad eh). One thing I did see locally was Easter crackers for sale, which I have never seen round here before, wonder where that idea originates from, seems a bit daft to me.

Full Moon

We tend to pickup quite a lot of care home staff, from both the private and local authority run residential homes. Lot's of these hard working folk do the night shift and over time you learn to keep the chat down if they look tired when you pick them up after a stressful night. But the one thing that they will all tell you is that they have the most stressful times on the nights when it's a full moon. It seems that the full moon has some strange sort of affect, sometimes even on the quietest least troublesome residents, and that strange things happen in the dead of night. They tell me of folk wondering down corridors who wouldn't usually leave their beds, and of the lustful words of men remembering loves from the dim and distant past. Folk who have shown no interest in the outside world for many years struggle towards windows, and some staff tell story's of residents stripping of to moon bathe. Who knows what causes this, do we become more sensitive to the moon and other forces when we get old? Who knows but their must be something in it because far too many staff from many different homes have been telling me these story's for far too long for it to be made up.

Good Aura

You meet some odd characters in this job and you soon learn not to be too quick and judge folk by first appearances, and the couple I picked up today proved the point. The guy was huge, so much so that the front seat had to be pushed right back for him to fit in the cab. With long hair and a wild beard he was every inch the picture of a hells angel type biker complete with the tattoos and red neckerchief. She on the other hand was small and dainty and had the look of a downtrodden housewife. The guy started to give me directions and as he spoke I was surprised by how cultured he sounded, but before he could finish he was rudely interrupted by the shockingly deep and gruff voice of the lady contradicting him and telling me to take them to a different address. The "lady" then swore and belched loudly before settling down for the ten mile or so trip to Ulverston. The guy seemed to be an all round good egg and we got along great, chatting about all sorts of stuff as we drove along interrupted only by occasional belching and swearing from the back seat. He must have caught my badly hidden look of disapproval, and when a huge tattooed hand gripped my shoulder, I thought "this is when things turn nasty" but no I was wrong, he said " her aura is a lot nicer than her persona you know" I had no answer for that as I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. He then went on to tell me that he had the gift of being to able to see the good and bad vibrations coming from deep within a persons spirit. I looked at him afresh but no to me, he still looked every inch the big hairy biker type and not the sensitive spiritualist type. I wasn't going to ask but when they both got out and he leaned back in to pay the fare he held his hand close to my forehead for a few seconds and then pronounced "yes you have a light purple aura with a kind soul". Well that's all right then isn't it?

Clootie Well

Have a look at this one from Joe in the Highlands of Scotland " Dating back to pre-Christian times, a 'clootie well' is a magical spring where you leave an article of clothing, a clootie. The idea is that if you are sick, you can leave your sickness in your clothing and as it decays away, so will your sickness." I've seen something similar in Greece but never knew we had anything like this over here, cool!

Superstitions

Driving through Dalton with a lady passenger the other day, when she spotted a lone magpie. She saluted smartly and said aloud "good morning mister magpie how's your wife". She told me it was an old superstition more prevalent in the rural areas. Any more I asked? She told me a couple I already knew but another couple of fresh ones she gave me were never move on a Friday and never trust a man with squeaky shoes, that means he owes money.