Huddersfield Factfile #2 - A Town of Discoveries

One day in 2009, a chap walking his doggy in Crosland Moor found the head of a crocodile. It wasn’t a big one, but it really shouldn’t have been in Crosland Moor, no matter how insalubrious that part of town may be (although I here it’s got a lot better since we moved).

Huddersfield is a place where things are found. Small boys discover globs of glittering blue jelly after unseasonable showers. Redoubtable citizens awake to find their shrubbery cauled in caterpillar silk. There is Arabic in the tomatoes and oversized pawprints in the woods. Last time they had to dredge the canal they found over a hundred human teeth, but no bodies at all.

Not everything that’s found is reported, of course. There aren’t many people who know about the horn that turned up in Honley, or the skink tongues of Scapegoat Hill. A lot of people know about the Appleyards, but they never found anything there, just the little holes in the trees and a sort of achy dread.

(I find things too, from time to time, as eagle-eyed readers will attest. Why, only last night I found a letter from Butterface, tucked underneath my Matey bubbles. She’s using my handwriting again and she left a hair in the soap. Without the monkey around I feel defenceless against these encroachments).

In Huddersfield you will find exactly what you’re looking for, unless something is looking for you. So if you’re planning a visit, as I’m sure you are, just make sure you bring a camera, a sack and your shrimping net. I’ll be there to keep you safe. You will know me by my skink tongue crown.

Huddersfield Factfile #1 - Emley Moor Mast

Sometimes I dream that the mast is my lover or that it is falling with me in its crown. It gets me every morning over the hills, elegant and terrifying as maths. It did fall down once, in the blue chapped March of ’69, and when they rebuilt it, the beetles came. Over land and through the air, thousands upon thousands, darkling, jewel, false clown and skin, long-lipped and ironclad, mud-loving, blister and snout, and to this day there’s a team of coleopterologists up there 24-7. More than three hundred new species of beetle have been discovered at Emley Moor, seventeen of which are named after Roy Castle.

They light it up at night in case of low-flying craft but it doesn’t stop the odd accident, like the stricken kestrel that fell from the sky, causing everyone for miles around to miss Bullseye. Or the incident with the ape. I can see it from here if I stretch but I only sometimes think about licking it. It tastes like a Lemonade Sparkler and if it ever falls down again, I will be riding it.