The Westmorland Gazette

(on its Bicentennial Anniversary in May 2018)

Two hundred years ago, before cars and bikes and trains,

Before I-pads, Facebook, Google, before submarines and planes,

When we couldn’t watch a movie aboard a jumbo jet

Yet we could snuggle near the hearth to read The Westmorland Gazette.

Before Edison lit his lightbulb, before Scott reached the Pole,

Before Baird turned on his telly, before Hurst scored that goal,

Blink, and time evades us by its incessant march, and yet

People still seek out their news from The Westmorland Gazette.

Ah Wordsworth and de Quincey, could you foresee the pass of time:

Our trivial little anecdotes, our incriminating crime?

The torment of two centuries, the troubles us beset

Have faithfully been recorded in The Westmorland Gazette.

From Crimea, and two World Wars when men had gone berserk,

The evil of the Holocaust, the Somme, and through Dunkirk,

Our memories may be fading, but lest we forget,

These annals are our witness: The Westmorland Gazette.

Listen can’t you hear, where Cumbrian cobblers craft their clogs,

The thunder of the printing press, the clatter of the cogs?

Can you smell a hint of ink, glimpse a worker’s silhouette,

The ghosts of past labourers who print The Westmorland Gazette.

Hush, there are scampering feet in poky Kendal mews,

There are shadows in the alleys scheming slyly to make news,

Dungarees and smocks evoke a secret suffragette:

Haunts of bygone sagas that filled The Westmorland Gazette.

And still today we perpetuate our social history,

Our joys, our thrills, our reunions, plus the times we disagree,

The goals we score, the races run, each sketchy vignette

Are treasured by us readers of The Westmorland Gazette.

So celebrate our rag with pride, its editorial views,

The sports page, and the letters page, and all the local news,

For them that draft the manuscript deserve a fine rosette

For keeping us up-to-date through The Westmorland Gazette.

Now, when in Twenty-Two Eighteen we’re whizzing round in Space,

And Earth has been obliterated, not leaving any trace,

Strumming harps in white robes we may have just one regret:

We’ll dream of eating fish-n-chips from off The Westmorland Gazette.

Andrew Musgrave

Author of ‘Penny, the Sprite of Pen-y-Ghent’, ‘Fun Runs and Guns’ and ‘Samak Fishing in Yemen’

Flookburgh