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I agree with celticrichie that it sounds great as a GHB strathspey, and it’d be good as a highland fling too.

The Grandfather, who didn't previously know of his existence, is infirm, an ex-miner suffering from what I took to be vibration white finger. In fact you could play it as a fast single reel if you simply speed up and straighten out the rhythm. Tulloch continues his brilliant melding of Alan Silitoe and Roddy Doyle in this, his second novel, once again mixing humor, despair, anger, and hope in a unabashedly social novel that tugs the heartstrings until they come close to breaking the heart.

One day, when all the usual spots are full up, his mother has only option left, dump him with her father, who she hasn't seen in over a decade.Full of character and wit, our Geordie ware has become the favoured mug for thousands of Geordie folk.

if you tell somene "you'll fettle it" this means you will mend something broken or suss out how something works. These are mostly delivered through the grandfather's lips with all the bitterness Tulloch can summon to the page. A cast of characters out of this world and all delivered with such rapour you want to hurry the narrator along so as to enjoy the next chuckle,the next tear, the next belly laugh. We invite users to post interesting questions about the UK that create informative, good to read, insightful, helpful, or light-hearted discussions. A saggar maker made a round or oval box - the saggar - out of fireclay, in which the pottery ware was placed before being put in the kiln for firing.The bottom of the saggar was made by hammering another piece of clay through an iron ring to form the shape, using a wooden mallet - he was the saggar maker's bottom knocker. I discovered today that none of the versions of this tune previously posted on “The Session” represent the way it is played up here in Northumbria today.

In any case, the story was heart-warming if not slightly predictable, and you did end up loving both main characters. Back in the days when we had potteries, women were employed to scrub off the stray bits of clay from part-fired pottery - usually the parts where the two halves of a mold joined, leaving a little ridge of clay which was scrubbed off with a hard brush. I loved Sonny Gee's character and the language used, but I did think the last 40 pages were a little OTT and beyond improbable. This 'why aye bonny lad' mug from the Moorland Pottery Original Scraffito range by Jonathan Plant is individually produced with Jonathan’s authentic Scraffito design technique. You are showing your age Keelefarmer - my mum used to say it, but she is eighty-five, and the potteries' mainly female workforce are long since redundant, and slowly passing on.

The grandfather is a misanthrope, who waits for death in his tiny house, his body deteriorating from a lifetime in the coal mines.