Delia Day

Wow, I do really think we should call 13th June "Delia Day". Delia Smith has been awarded a DBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. That makes her Dame Delia Smith, and not before time too!

For international friends who don't know how this goes, 'Dame' is the female equivalent of being 'Sir' somebody. Dame Delia has been showing peple 'How to Cook' ever since she herself was a young woman and there's many a decent home cook who owes her skill to Delia. Her books are for everyone, at every level, and the great thing is her recipes WORK. Yes they do! If Delia says leave somethng to stand in the fridge then do it because it'll be important for sure. Follow any recipe of hers to the letter and you just cannot go wrong.

We had a lovely day out yesterday, in Grantham which is in the south of Lincolnshire, our home county. It's only about 70 miles away but it was such a lovely day and there was a Farmers' Market on and an ordinary market and a Salvation Army Band visiting from Northrn Ireland. The band had a parade to the Guildhall, where they were received by the Mayor and Mayoress for a 'Welcome' reception. Afterwards they congegated on the green in front of the Guildhall and played a short concert. It was all so very very English, I can't tell you - my dear friend in Germany would move mountains to see that. The main object of our tripwas to visit the museum which was next to the Guildhall and just as a bonus admission to that was free.

And look what we got! A full day out, with entertainment included, and all it cost us was two cups of petrol (gas) and a pub lunch.

Guess what? I didn't take any photos because I forgot the camera! WOOPS! The birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton and Margaret Thatcher and I didn't take the camera.

I could show you where we went this afternoon though and it was ony 5 minutes away! Just around the corner, we went to the park.

It was the Steelworks Children's Gala across the other side but we didn't go there becase we were enjoyng the peace and quiet. That's what they call it now, Steelworks Children's Gala, because there's only one steelworks now. Practically everyone's dad will have worked there at some time or other because in its heyday we had 3 steelworks. Sadly the very existence of the remaining one is on the line now, with all the financial shenanigans going on in England.

It was on the day of one of the galas (we always pronounced it 'gayla'), June 1st 1974, that the worst tragedy ever to befall this area took place. The Nypro chemical works exploded, killing 29 people, causing the destruction of almost an entire village , wreaking havoc for miles around and prompting the mass exodus of families with small children who were too traumatised to stay.

At the time we lived in the bungalow I've been telling you about recently where we were accident prone, though we never saw it at the time. It was a very hot day, Keith was changing the front windows of the house. One was done and another has half in- half not and Keith was chatting to his brother, who lived next door at the time. I was hoovering when suddenly I felt - or thought I did - a little bit giddy, as if the floor had moved. I called out for Keith and he came running in shouting about a ball of fire at Nypro. They could see it clearly because our house was in the very flat Trent Valley, as was Nypro. What we had felt - all of us - was the massive air movement of the explosion across the plain. It was the worst peacetime disaster ever to have happened here.

As years went by it became the yardstick by which people recalled things: "well, it was before Nypro" or "Mrs Jones was a widow so it must have been after Nypro" - you know? It's rarely mentioned nowadays except in history books but everyone who was alive at the time can remember where they were and what they were doing on 'the day Nypro went up'.

Well, I never started out to tell you that but, as I have and it was such a tragedy, I can hardly go showing you my park pictures now can I? Next time eh?

xxxx