'Musak' is aimed at the young (From Gazette & Herald)

'Musak' is aimed at the young

FEBRUARY 27, and I see that the island cum pedestrian refuge at the Castle Howard Road/A64 junction still hasn't got its plastic fencing removed, although it seems to be collapsing around it. The job itself looks as though it's completed, and I wonder why the tidying-up takes so long.

The same seems to apply at Old Malton's flood defences. I have read on various occasions that work is complete yet, to the passer-by, there seems to be several lots of temporary fencing around the place, and one wonders when the area will be put back 'ship-shape and Bristol fashion'. This particular syndrome seems to be in the nature of the English, somehow, for the final clearing-up seems always to drag on forever.

I have long asked for the island in the centre of Railway Street to be treated as a proper island, and not one which can be circumnavigated in either direction. At the moment, vehicles can pass either side, and in either direction which, apart from being confusing, is also dangerous. This was again brought to my attention today when driving down Railway Street, two cars approached me from the direction of the bridge. The first came over to my side of the road, crossed in front of me, and went up Wells Lane. OK. That's what one would expect. Yet as I was about to turn left and park in front of Yates', the second car, a speedy hatchback, decided to go round the other side of the island at high speed, also making for Wells Lane. A dangerous manoeuvre. Whilst I did manage to arrange a site meeting here several years ago, I didn't succeed in getting this refuge to have just one-way round it. At the time, buses used both sides, and this had some influence on the decision, but it really ought to be brought into line with all other islands. Being largely for the safety of pedestrians, it's time for them to be given consideration and priority.

And talking about consideration for pedestrians, it would be helpful if cars being parked in front of the shops down the side of Malton's Market Place were restricted from obstructing half the pavement with their rear ends. I appreciate vehicles differ with the length of rear-end overhang, but a line of kerbs within the parking area to restrict rearwards movement could perhaps solve this one.

I queried, once again, the noise coming from the overhead speakers in Kwik Save the other day, and was told that it was an actual radio programme. Be that as it may, the singer, and I use the word loosely, sounded as though she was in pain and how could she be conducive in promoting sales I don't know. The 'musak' in many large stores is aimed at younger folk, yet, if the management look round, they will surely see that the majority of their customers are in a maturer age group. So why can't music, if necessary at all, be of a kind which is complimentary to shopping and not so raucous that all you want to do is get out as quickly as possible? I think, perhaps, I know why, and that is because those in the store live with it every day and simply do not 'hear' it!

I had my normal 'duty day' at Yorkshire Air Museum on Monday and never cease to wonder, when I look at Sir George Cayley's flying machine, which he flew at Brompton Dale in the summer of 1849, as he said "like a noble white bird." The museum's replica, built for Anglia Television, was actually flown by being towed by a car with a very brave test pilot, Derek Piggott, at the controls. It was then taken to Brompton Dale where it was filmed in the air, and the museum's latest booklet, showing all of its many aircraft, shows an actual photograph of it in flight. To actually fly in this machine, which Cayley called a 'governable parachute', must surely have taken today's pilot considerable skill and courage and it should be remembered that Cayley's coachman took to the air in this wood and fabric affair more than 54 years before the Wright brothers made their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Yorkshire folk are surely proud of their own 'father of flight', Sir George Cayley.

A copy of a small local booklet I have is full of information about local folk. Now, many of them are just names, yet when it was printed around 1889 it would be known who they were. So a Conservative banquet to Mr C Sykes at Norton on January 24, 1887, is now a bit of a mystery. Interesting though, to see that the Thirsk and Malton Railway was opened in 1853, and that Bower's fire was January 17, 1884. The last public execution took place in England on May 26, 1868; there was a great gale at Scarborough on August 6, 1857; Lord Middleton was born in 1844 and the Market Place well fell in, on November 13 1881. A mine of information if you know what it's all about. The booklet was printed by John Gibson, printer of Old Maltongate, Malton, who was also an agent for new and used brass instruments.

NB: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know." Harry S Truman (1884-1972).

Updated: 10:13 Wednesday, March 12, 2003