Cree blaze
PIGEONS were unhurt after a fire spread to their cree.
The blaze started in a shed on an allotment in Ryhope Street South, Sunderland, at about 6.20pm yesterday.
The fire is thought to be an accident, after wind spread rubbish being burned off.
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NB: 'Cree' is a Northumbrian dialect word for a small, typically home-made, garden hut or pen.
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4 comments:
"Fire in garden shed" is the archetype of a local news story. My wife's favourite, however, is "York girl fails to enter quarter-finals."
Ah - but it wasn't just a fire but a 'blaze' - and in a *cree*!
...Naturally, hearing about this almost-significant gardening accident, locals would have been worried about the pigeons; and of course these fears needed to be set at rest...
Yes, you can learn a lot about the real culture by reading stories that you can only find in the local news.
Years ago, while traveling through Wyoming, I read a story in a local newspaper about a man who had recently died.
He'd been drinking with some friends and went outside to relieve himself. Apparently he passed out while he was out there, because later that night one of his friends found him lying on the bluff.
Now here's the thing that caught my eye: this friend didn't help him up and back into the house, even though it was a fairly cold night. This was the American West, you see, the land of rugged individualism. It would be a kind of insult to imply that someone couldn't take of himself.
So what did this "friend" do? He put a coat over the man lying on the bluff and then went back in to rejoin the party.
That story has always stuck in my mind as the epitome of the cowboy ethos.
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