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Hellish dark and smells of cheese!
When we were growing up in Earlston, this was the answer my brother and I often gave if an unsuspecting adult asked what the weather was like outside.
Not surprisingly we often had to dodge a clip on the ear from people who had never heard of R.S. Surtees and his wonderful creation John Jorrocks, the sporting Cockney grocer. During a drunken debauch, Jorrocks' hunt servant Sam Pigg, when asked how the weather went outside the window, opened the fireside cupboard, stuck his head in and uttered our favourite line.
Surtees and Jorrocks are out of fashion now but he was essential reading for me when young. The night before I married, I calmed my pre-nuptial nerves with a half bottle of whisky and a copy of Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour.
Unfortunately today, Surtees, like so many things associated with fox hunting, is unacceptable and out of date, but nothing will ever detract from my blissful memories of chasing across the country after a pack of hounds in full tongue and imagining myself to be one of Surtees dashing heroines, all of whom could outride any man.
A Northumberland man, Surtees knew his fox hunting. He lived from 1864 till 1895, which was probably the golden age of the sport, and his creation, John Jorrocks steps out of the page into a reader's life. Perhaps, one day, he will again receive the wider adulation he deserves.
Out this month.......
Look out for Liz Taylor's new book "The Storm" - a historical novel about the Eyemouth fishing disaster. Available at all good bookshops including Talisman Bookshop.
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