#yorkshire
They’re really rockin’ in Bradford,
Off the Pennine Way.
Deep in the heart of Yorkshire
And all round Robin Hood’s Bay.
All over South Ossett
Down there to New Farnley.
Roast beef and Yorkie Puddings,
God’s County Yay!
Yull see ‘em rambling near Ilkley,
Right to the county line,
Sheffield steel and Wednesday –
A football team so fine.
Better still, Leeds United,
Greatest club of all time.
Yorkshire, Kings of Cricket,
Oh what a boon!
Get down that wicket,
We’ll be champs by June.
Down a ginnel or snicket,
See our Olympic Champs.
Coal Miner Picket,
Relight those lamps.
Racing pigeons and ferrets,
Stereotypes tha knows.
Over t’top in Lancashire,
Them there’s our foes.
We’re the greatest county,
Our pride really glows.
We know you all do hate us,
It keeps us on our toes.
So we’ll be rockin’ in Yorkshire,
What more can I say?
Us Tykes're as barmy as Barnsley,
So I’ll be on my way.
Paul Butters
(With due thanks to Chuck Berry and also The Beach Boys)
© PB 2\5\2016. Slightly Amended 14\4\2023.
Apr 14, 2023
Apr 14, 2023 at 3:09 PM UTC
Ted Slade • (my cousin)
Withernsea, Holderness, East Yorkshire
Last night the sea ripped the beach from its bed.
We heard the screams
but know too well not to interfere
in these family disputes.
In the morning we gathered to look,
ghouls at a death,
the sea at our feet, calm,
sated, gulls riding at anchor on it shoulders.
The meadow’s gone the same way,
yard by yard, year by year.
Now the house sways on the brink.
When he saw his rose bushes
scattered down the cliff, Jack cried.
Finally we moved out when
the garden shed was launched
one winter’s night.
Very Important Persons
brought their sympathies,
and went away nodding.
Perhaps we’ll become little islanders.
Though surely not.
... New Atlanteans at least.
Ted Slade • 1939-2004
Apr 18, 2020
Apr 18, 2020 at 11:24 AM UTC
When the skylarks would warble hover and sing
at about a hundred feet, high on the wing, and we…
on a heat clicking Sunday between Salt End and the sea,
well we knew - just from the ozone, on the breeze
that we’d be off …a shimmering heat haze convoy of old crocks,
Bud, Margaret, Brian and me to Tunstall,
a diminishing, mystical land of sun, sand, sea - and tumbling rocks.
But it wasn’t just us…it was a cavalcade - motors galore.
Uncles, Aunties, Cousins, Grans, Grandads and more
in Austins, Morris’s, Vauxhalls and Fords,
And a big old Rover wi’them wide running boards,
a motor bike’n’sidecar with Maurice, Denise & our Val
to wring the best from the day a’la Plage de Tunstall’…
The beach crackled in the heat…
if you walked too slow it’d burn your feet.
and our Dads, our ‘civil engineers’, built a brick oven and in a
giggling gaggle… Mums cooked a real Sunday dinner.
Kids’d run back & forth to the sea and back
buckets & spades, hacking big holes and shots in goal,
cricket with fallen rocks for a wicket and,
after pudding, burying drunken dads in the sand.
Heavy, wet woolen cozzies, sand in groins,
...changing in turn, under a soaking wet, gritty towel.
“Don’t dry me with that, Ow! Buddy hell - watch my sunburn.”
Then, all back in the cars, for our return
into the sunset and driving away.
Chaffing sore shoulders.
Chuffing good day! - yeah…Parfait!!
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 12:07 PM UTC
The fog unrolls itself from hill to tarmac
like winter blinds. It sinks behind hedges
and hovers, hawk-like, over the canal.
A streetlight winks from the path,
muffled by ***** white like a child
smothered in his new winter coat.
The trees have given up for the year
leaving mushy browns and crisp yellows,
sweet damp smell pushed up noses.
Morrison’s is open till ten now.
Piles of pumpkins watch in sorrow,
waiting for homes next to plastic spiders.
Oct 21, 2016
Oct 21, 2016 at 9:47 AM UTC
They’re really rockin’ in Bradford,
Off the Pennine Way.
Deep in the heart of Yorkshire
And round the Robin Hood’s Bay.
All over South Ossett
And down to New Farnley.
Roast beef and Yorkie Puddings,
God’s Own County, Yay!
Yull see ‘em rambling at Ilkley,
Right to the county line,
Sheffield steel and Wednesday –
A football team so fine.
Better still, Leeds United,
Greatest club of all time.
Yorkshire, Kings of Cricket,
Oh what a boon!
Get down that wicket,
We’ll be champs by June.
Down a ginnel or snicket,
See our Olympic Champs.
Coal Miner Picket,
Relight those lamps.
Racing pigeons and ferrets,
Stereotypes tha knows.
Over t’top in Lancashire,
Them there’s our foes.
We’re the greatest county,
Our pride really glows.
We know you all hate us,
It keeps us on our toes.
So we’ll be rockin’ in Yorkshire,
What more can I say?
Us Tykes 're as barmy as Barnsley,
So I’ll be on my way.
Paul Butters
(With due thanks to Chuck Berry and also The Beach Boys)
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 6:21 AM UTC
The Yorkshire accent
sounds pretty rough
"T" doesn't exist
unless you from Bradford
then you can't pronounce things propperly
and you say Bratfd
and the "o" lasts too long
the note is held on
now you knooow
how two letters are pronounced
go learn the dialect
not heard down soulth
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 1:57 PM UTC
Come up north to see the great outdoors
Rolling hills
Scenes leaving you wanting more
Never mind the weather
Whether its rain or shine
Grab a pint
Sit down
And enjoy our way of life
Born and bred northern boy
But no flat cap or corduroys
Yorkshire til the day I die
I'll represent that West Yorks sign
Faithful to my northern life
Faithful to my northern rhyme
Brought up well with northern vibes
Through hard times, miners strike
Times when maggie thatcher tried
to stir up **** with lies designed
Got miners and police to fight
But don't believe that southern hype...
Those brutal battles gave us life
It redefined our future times
Redefined our future lines
Redefined the northern kind
Redefined our northern humour
Redefined our northern style
Tourists come from far and wide
to find out what the North is like
Expecting lack of cultured life
Surprised we're not uncultured swines
Rewarded with our northern minds
Our northern ways
Our northern lives
Come up north to see the great outdoors
Rolling hills
Scenes leaving you wanting more
Never mind the weather
Whether its rain or shine
Grab a pint
Sit down
Enjoy our way of life
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 3:50 PM UTC
One often 'as problems sleepin'
In ways which affect ones 'ealth
But 'ow can one deal wit 'out but weepin'
When one 'as a fear of their self
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 8:32 PM UTC
The sky lies on the horizon
like a smoke-coloured cat
draped over a sofa of heather,
purple as pansies but sharper,
scratching against boots and paws.
It washes across the landscape
in a swathe of paint,
broken by breadcrumb rocks.
Up here, the wind gallops,
almost spins me round
to face home again.
Water framed by narrow paths
like battlements, flicking
onto grey stones and sand,
smell of earth, damp air.
Our path drops down
like the side of a ship and the dog,
ginger beacon in a sea of bog-grass,
skids on his front paws.
I shuffle sideways, crab steps
slipping from mud to puddle.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 3:39 AM UTC
I took her for some fish and chips,
We had a reight good time.
The two of us kept locking lips,
It really int a crime.
But then she saw this pilot bloke:
It really wasn’t fair.
Though I’m a super Trekkie clerk,
She saw me as a square.
What she saw in him I’ll never know,
There really was no reason.
But off she went with him, oh no!
It felt just like a treason.
Those fish and chips are getting cold,
With no-one there to eat ‘em.
Them mushy peas have gone to waste, be told,
But she prefers to cheat ‘em.
There are more fish in the sea they say,
And now I’m talking females.
Every dog will have his day,
I’d better watch my emails.
Paul Butters
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 4:30 PM UTC
Fahnd 'im lyin' int middle o' t'street
bruised an' battered from t'tramplin' feet.
Ee'd crawled aht from some gutter
an' them cries tha' ee did utter
almost like a knife through butter
cut mi quick an' deep.
'Is broken wings ah tried to treat
gently praying that ee'd be reyt.
But when 'is cry became a stutter
t'world rolled dahn its shutters
an' rahnd mi someone muttered:
" 'is prospects ain't 'alf bleak".
An' that poor lost little 'eap
ah cradled but coun't weep,
til mi arms discerned a flutter.
So in mi chest ee'll see the summer
from that 'ollow haven like no other
where ee can safely sleep.
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 11:59 AM UTC
“Yorkshire! Yorkshire!” I hear the EDL scream,
as if somehow the county, relates to their regime?
Trying to push on others their far right views,
and tainting Yorkshire with their taboos
cos Yorkshire to me, is whatever the **** I want it to be,
I do love a bit of local pride...
maybe to revel in the comfort it provides,
and even though stereotypes say we're tight,
as well as stubborn, argumentative (they're prolly right),
But I'd rather that, than be uptight,
like a stereotypical southerner might
I recently read a quote from Stuart Maconie,
“England has a bottom half,
but there isn't a south, in the same way there's a north”
The North in the south means desolation,
A cultural wasteland with deserted stations,
a place built on violent, aggressive foundations,
With mid summer Arctic temperature fluctuations,
Nothing that comes close to a nation....
But that's not what I see,
To be from the north means good fish and chips,
with tomato sauce and vinegar, it's glory on the lips,
I see people willing to lend a hand,
A honest chat about the weather as you stand at a bus stop
that you never planned,
It doesn't matter whether it's a cob, bun, bap, barm or roll,
Or that the north was ****** over by the outsourcing of coal,
Or your opinion that we're all just sat on the dole, drinking tea out of a ***** bowl.
We should still all have a similar goal,
To have a good time,
and not hurt a soul
Sometimes I do like to revel in the divide,
but I'll always welcome people from the other side,
Acceptance is not sin,
and if you let it,
it generally ends up with a win : win
What's Yorkshire to you? I haven't got a clue... but come sit down so we can have a chat and a brew! And hopefully we'll both learn something we never knew.
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 12:33 PM UTC