Welcome to the Northerner, Guardian Unlimited's weekly digest of the best of the northern papers.
SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT THAT CHIPPY
Ho, ho, ho - and a happy Christmas to one and all, especially to The Happy Chip takeaway in Newcastle upon Tyne, whose customers are said to be happy indeed. After the catalogue of horrors heard by the courts in recent weeks, the chippy in Waterloo Street is set to offer us some rather more cheerful - and scientifically instructive - legal debate early in the new year.
Fish and chips weren't the only thing on customers' menus, according to a curious prosecution spotted by the local Evening Chronicle as it trawled through the magistrates' court list. Not content with the vigorous buzz given by non-brewed condiment or mushy peas, the chippy is accused of dishing out "magic mushrooms" along with the battered fish and spud.
Since, under certain conditions, the fungi contain psilocin and psilocybin, the Happy Chip faces the charge of supplying class A drugs. The issue, hotly denied by brothers Thariq and Sajit Mohammed who run the chippy, hinges on how much preparation went into the mushrooms before they were ladled out.
The Home Office explains to the Chronicle that the 12 varieties - with names like psilocybe semilanceata or liberty cap - may be legally sold "in their natural condition". But once cooked, dried out or even frozen, they can cause euphoria, hallucinations or just plain tummy ache and selling them becomes an offence.
Newcastle chip shops sound exciting places generally; the brothers already sell what the Chronicle describes, under the commendable headline "Fish and Trips" as "legal highs such as herbal ecstasy and amyl nitrate". There was a time when managing to persuade the fryer to ladle free scraps on your chips gave most people enough of a high. But we live in a more worldly world.
MORE HERBAL HIGHS
Mind you, it's always wrong to imagine nostalgically that Those Were The Days, when the sun always shone, the empire thrived and Britain was wholly crime-free. The Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News raises questions about past perk-me-ups with a headline this week: "Herbs the key to a century of health".
In contrast to the usual maxims about fresh air and exercise, new centenarian Margaret Clarke ascribes her hundred years of good health to a diet spiced with herbs. Exactly what they were, she doesn't disclose, although she took the name of her daughter Iris from her garden as well. Mrs Clarke's tonics helped her survive long years of cleaning Widnes Conservative club and got her through a 100th birthday visit from Runcorn's mayor. Maybe a trip to the Happy Chip is in order to celebrate the power of natural remedies.
CHIPMUNK AMONG THE PINES
The plant most in demand at the moment, of course, is the Christmas tree, and the Northern Echo's classified ads provide an interesting guide to the contemporary range of this once simple product. You can, for example, get a six foot artificial tree from a seller in Darlington complete with decorations, two sets of lights and a free fibre optic tree thrown in too - "accept GBP10 the lot". At the other end of the scale, in the eight last-minute listings for unwanted trees, is a smaller, five foot artificial pine, with decorations themed in pink, white and silver plus "30 hand-painted baubles". That's GBP25 - beaten only by a 7ft "supreme pine natural-look tree with pink, white and silver colour-coded decorations - the sheer sophistication of it! - which will set you back GBP40.
Those can all be imagined, probably, and snapped up over the phone, but the only non-tree item in the festive section qualifies, I think, as a must-see-before-purchase. It's a "large, hand-made, fancy-dressed Christmas chipmunk". Yours for a tenner.
LIGHTEN UP, CARLISLE
Scrooge is about this Christmas, of course, and perhaps at his most active in Carlisle. The local News and Star reports unseasonal grumblings from local "craft traders" at the way the city's dandy new Christmas lights have pushed them off their regular pitch.
"My takings are down from GBP2000 last year to GBP400 this time," says Austen Davies, who comes to the three day, pre-Christmas craft fair with a vanload of premium sausages. Other stallholders echo his annoyance at being shifted to the side of Carlisle cathedral "because of the sheer size of this year's festive municipal display."
You would think that good Christmas lights would be bringing in the shoppers. That certainly happens in Leeds, where organisers claim that the sumptuous lighting is the only man-made thing on Earth apart from the Great Wall of China which can be seen from the Moon. This is not true, but it's the kind of hype which the Carlisle crafters ought to learn if they want to lure customers along to their new pitch.
Meanwhile, in Manchester the city council and local Buddhists have found an eye-catching way of preserving Christmas tempers: mass meditation in Exchange Square. Amid murmurings of "Om", frazzled shoppers have been encouraged to set down their bags and relax, according to the Manchester Evening News.
The whole thing is guided by a soft-voiced run-through of meditation techniques, broadcast from a giant screen. Staff from Manchester Buddhist Centre around to help in case anyone gets too relaxed or forgets what the vital present was that brought them desperately deadline-shopping in the first place.
KNOTTY ASH, WHAT A WONDERFUL PLACE
While calm reigns in Manchester, Liverpool is probably the most exciting northern city in the run-up to Christmas. A battle is brewing over the planned tram system (the nightmare prospect of roads being dug up all through 2008, the year that the city becomes European capital of culture). Then there was a skydiver who mysteriously parachuted this week into the city centre, nonchalantly landing in Leeds Street, according to the Liverpool Daily Post, before "packing up his parachute and wandering off." The stunt brought a fair amount of Happy Chip-type excitement to passers-by, but Merseyside police are having none of that.
"This man is highly irresponsible," a spokeswoman tells the Post. "We definitely want to have words with him."
Meanwhile, there is good news in Knotty Ash, the Victorian suburb of the Pool made famous by Ken Dodd. The Liverpool Echo reveals that the fabled home of Nigel Ponsonby-Smallpiece and his fellow Diddymen is almost certain to become a conservation area.
Adding to the mystique of the capital of culture status, this will see the landscape of 19th century terraces given extra protection, along with the impressively green plantings of trees, successors to the original gnarled ash tree which gave the place its name.
The move will also bring the tally of conservation areas in Liverpool to 32 - impressive for a city sometimes seen elsewhere in the country as a predictable, northern industrial hive. Ken Dodd is among those celebrating, and perhaps even composing an updated version of his lyrical anthem "Knotty Ash, Knotty Ash, What A Wonderful Place".
YORKSHIRE NOUS SAVES HALIFAX MAN
We mustn't be too parochial about the north, and it's good to report that one of its citizens has been making the news in distant Australia. The Halifax Courier reports how local textile manufacturer Harold Holdsworth used Yorkshire grit and ingenuity when his jeep got stuck in a crocodile-infested quicksands.
This is not the sort of thing that happens in Hebden Bridge or Shelf, but Mr Holdsworth knew the right sort of boy scout thing to do. After waiting for a while in the shade of his stuck jeep, he noticed the occasional plane winging past overhead - the only sign of life in the otherwise desolate bush.
Abandoning his initial plans of walking 65 miles to the nearest town, particularly after spotting crocodile tracks in the sand, he grabbed the traditional stout stick. Using this, he carved a vast SOS in the sand - impressively illustrated by the Courier - and rescue teams reached him the following day.
WE RECOMMEND...
Ideally, I'd be recommending the Huddersfield Choral Society's Messiah this Christmas, the Rolls Royce performance of the great Oratorio which has always been a favourite of northern choirs. But even with 1500 seats in the Town Hall, the concert is four or five times over-subscribed and those who get in are the lucky winners of a local ballot.
Instead, from a vast selection of Christmas offerings, why not return to childhood via The Wind in the Willows at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds? Kenneth Grahame was a far from happy man, as the BBC's Big Read competition recently, instructively revealed. But he created one of those wonderful stories which delights generations in turn.
The Playhouse production is Alan Bennett's version, which adds a bit of wry northern observation to the characters, from gruff Badger to the nasty, pistol-toting weasels. It runs until Valentine's night.
* Box office tel: 0113 213 7700
Fax: 0113 213 7210
or book online.
MANNINGHAM MILL TRANSFORMED
Finally, a marvellous piece of news for the north which hundreds of people in Bradford are celebrating on Sunday, December 21. The streets of Manningham, associated in recent years with trouble and discontent (which is actually only a small part of the local picture), will be filled with celebrating revellers.
The reason, as the Bradford Telegraph and Argus reports, is the long-awaited start to the restoration of Lister's velvet works at Manningham Mill, the largest and one of the finest of all monuments to the great age of British heavy industry.
Crowned by a 225ft Italianate boiler chimney, whose summit platform was large enough to host a celebratory dinner for the firm's Victorian directors, the vast complex is being converted into luxury flats in an GBP18 million scheme by the Manchester developers Urban Splash. They have an excellent track record at this kind of thing, and all 370 properties are already taken, with a waiting list. Just the sort of tonic - even better than the alleged products of the Happy Chip - that Manningham and Bradford need.
NORTHERN NEWSPAPERS
This is Lancashire
This is Hull
News and Star (Cumbria)
Liverpool Echo
Newcastle Evening Chronicle
This is the North East
Yorkshire Post
Sunderland Echo
Manchester Online
This is Bradford
North West Evening Mail
Sheffield Today
icTeesside
Halifax Evening Courier
Huddersfield Examiner
Scarborough Evening News
Oldham Evening Chronicle
* The Northerner will be taking a break next week and will return on January 2.