Footsteps of the past – part I

One of my responsibilities as Features Editor of busy, daily regional newspaper in the 1990s was to source and write regular nostalgia pages. These were populated with old photos of places, people’s memories of the past and where they were when famous historical events happened.

These features were so popular, the Editor of the Northampton Chronicle & Echo turned them into books and calendars, which sold out in days.

It often struck me how unfamiliar the surnames of the people I was writing about were to me – the Buswells, Tebbutts, Chadwicks, Perkins, Phillpotts and Webbs weren’t names read out on our school register back up in West Lancashire where I’d grown up.

We’d grown up with people like Stanleys, Halsalls, Plunketts, Molyneuxes, O’Connors and Parrs. And I knew how to pronounce all our local place names with ease – Maghull (not Muggle as one outsider calls it) or Kirkby (the second k is silent) – yet struggled with how to say some of those in Northamponshire. Cogenhoe isn’t sounded out, as you may expect, but pronounced Cook-no, Rothwell is known to those living there as Rowell and don’t get me started on whether you drop the ‘e’ on River Nene or call it Neen.

Being sent out to interview old Northamptonians when I was a fresh-faced, wet-behind-the-ears trainee reporter on the Chron’s sister paper, the historic Northampton Mercury & Herald, was especially challenging.

I’d navigate my way, pre Sat Nav, with the foldable town map every reporter was given, to my destination in my battered old Renault 4 around Northampton’s many terraced streets, built in Victorian times to support the bustling boot and shoe industry. Once I’d found the correct place, I’d have to begin the job of getting the story into my notebook and writing it up for deadline.

The interview itself was often the trickiest bit. Not because of the subject matter or digging for that exclusive hook, but because I couldn’t understand the accent, even though my roommate at uni was from Northampton and kind of how I ended up living there three years later.

“Where’s that?” I asked cool Koo on our first meeting. “Just north of Southampton?” You’ve correctly guessed I wasn’t following in my Geography teacher’s father’s footsteps, but reading English Lit and Drama. (As an aside, Koo was really Katherine and her Northampton friends and family were baffled she’d called herself that but this was back in the 80s when a certain Prince was dating an American beauty).

The only time I struggled to understand Koo was when she’d pronounce wall as wool, but it was when I was sent to interview older Northamptonians that the games began.

One chap who particularly stands out was living in a care home. He drank beer throughout the interview, belched in my face at regular intervals and I only caught the odd word of his responses, having to repeat my questions several times. He was in his 90s and gave me a kiss at the end of our meeting and – somehow – I managed to get the copy past the beady eye of the Editor.