NOW then, it seems that I have upset some people. I stand accused of being one-sided and that I take very seriously. If I am upsetting only one side, I am failing with the other lot and that, I agree, would be unforgivable.

The side that has been complaining are, I was surprised to hear from t'Editor t'other day, the offcumdens, or at least some of them. Sensitive souls, these, and they seem to think that I am prejudiced against them.

They have even gone as far as to suggest that I am politically incorrect, which I have to admit is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me.

But to prove that, as a class, I have nothing against our most welcome new residents from afar, I will now turn the spotlight on a particular type of local whom the Curmudgeoness describes as the "be'nowts".

These are men and women who, says Mrs C, have "been nowhere and done nowt". And, indeed, they can be a pain in the Dale.

So satisfied are they that Beggarsdale life is the only possible lifestyle that any sensible and intelligent person could possible choose, they dismiss all else.

Anyone who has travelled is akin to the tinkers and diddycoys, to be watched with suspicion unless they raid the chicken coop. Anyone who has made any brass out of anything other than farming is a spiv.

And anyone who might show the slightest interest in the arts - like, for instance reading a book - is homosexual.

We have out be'nowts in Beggarsdale, of course, like Mean Mike, the postmistress's husband, although he has travelled: he did, after all, slither over the tops from Crookedale to woo our Dale's most eligible spinster (after, that is, she had frightened off the all the local lads with her razor tongue).

Yet Cousin Kate thinks nothing of jetting off to Oz on her own to visit relatives.

But, for me, the worst of the be'nowts live in Mar'ton and most of them drink at the Faded Glory, the once stylish coaching inn long sunk into mediocrity, its Georgian panels and plaster work buried behind garish advertisements, its once sharp repartee drowned by juke box and bleepings and pingings from serried ranks of gaming machines.

I happened to be waiting there for Mrs C one recent market day when a well-dressed young couple came in, ordered and paid for a round of drinks and sandwiches, and then disappeared to the loos.

Patently tourists, they had come a long way and, equally patently, had been taken in by the elegance of the Faded Glory exterior.

When they emerged, they shot each other disgusted looks, drank their drinks and made for the door.

The landlord leaned over the bar and shouted after them: "I thought tha wanted summat t'eat. Tha butties is on t'way."

"You eat them," said the man with a pleasant wave. Then they were gone.

"Southerners," said the landlord to no-one in particular. "Money to burn."

He obviously had not paid a visit to his loos that morning because, quite frankly, they stank. If his kitchens are anything like his loos, he is very lucky to be in business. Thus the be'nowts: the customer, or the visitor, is always wrong!

*The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.

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