Cumbrian Christmas stocking fillers. 23/12/05

Top Ten stocking fillers (for less than £10)

These last minute presents, bought in haste, can be enjoyed at leisure over the holiday break.
1. Flimby’s Poet Laureate Ethel Fisher has published a second selection of Humorous Tales in Cumberland Dialect Rhyme, available in paperback (£5.99) or on CD (£4.99). This collection includes the classic ‘She’s nivver lived’.
2. This year’s surprise Christmas bestseller is ‘Does Anything Eat Wasps?’, 101 questions and answers from The New Scientist magazine. Wise, weird and wacky answers to such important questions as; ‘Why do geese fly in a V shape’, and ‘How long can I live on beer alone?’
3. You can conduct your own investigation into the above with the help of the ‘Cumbria Real Ale Guide’ (£3.95), compiled by the four Cumbria branches of the Campaign for Real Ale. Start with a pint of Yates’ in The Ship at Allonby and count the years it takes to get to The Gate in Yanwath.
4. How long can you live on Rum? If your family name is Jefferson the answer is nearly 300 years. ‘The Jefferson’s of Whitehaven’ by Brian Parnaby (£8.95) is an unofficial history of the trading dynasty from 1704 to 1998. The author has distilled this account from public records, both local and in the Caribbean, and fortified it with maps, copies of original documents, and photographs.
5. Black and white photographs dominate Jeff Taylor’s ‘Keswick: Then and Now’ (£7.50), all profits from which go towards the Wivell Bridge Appeal. This pictorial record of change spanning 100 years has two images on each page, past and present, both taken from the same vantage point. The most apposite are the two photographs showing a flooded Fitz Park and Bowling Club; the first from the 1930’s and the most recent from January 2005, a consequence of the same storm that swept away Wivell Bridge. Pictures of Keswick take precedence although the last chapter also includes some of the outlying villages; Borrowdale, Threlkeld, Braithwaite etc.
6. Borrowdale is the setting for a brutal garroting in ‘Murder in Cumbria’, (£8.95) a round-up of the usual suspects from the last century. Ian Ashbridge recounts 20 infamous cases from the beautiful county’s less attractive past; including the shooting of Percy Toplis, the alleged ‘Monocled Mutineer’.
7. If this subject matter is too unseasonal perhaps Laurie Kemp’s ‘The Ghosts of Cumbria’ (£6.99) will raise your spirits. The characters who haunt these pages include; The Hangman of Brigham, James Lowther, and the headless ghost of Hutton Hall. The lack of hard evidence and the anecdotal nature of these tall tales mean as many questions are posed as answered.
8. No such problem with the Cumbria Crossword Book (£4.99), which contains the answers in the back. Michael Curl has compiled Cumbria Magazine’s monthly crossword for years and here presents his favourite sixty puzzles to test your local knowledge.
9. Local images take pride of place in the Fir Press ‘West Cumbria Calendar 2006’ (£2.99). Although predominantly of Workington there are some photographs, past and present, from Flimby and Maryport.
10. And finally … a Christmas bestseller with a Christmas theme. ‘A Wayne in a Manger’ (£10) by Gervase Phinn is a collection of Christmas and Nativity Play stories form his bestselling Dales books. In the land of tea-towel headgear and cardboard angel wings, we meet the inn-keeper who fancied Mary, the baby Jesus whose head fell off, and the wise man who said ‘woof’.


This article was first published in the 'Times & Star' 23rd December 2005. Copyright remains the property of THe Derwent Bookshop.