2000 … 12 years ago
Hiya I’m Frankie …
Whenever people ask me where I’m from, because of my accent, I say “originally from Millom”.
“Where?”
“Millom, in Cumbria” …
Still blank …
“Heard of Barrow in Furness?”
“Oh yes”.
“Near there.”
Millom isn’t on the map, although it has been in the press a few times and on TV, usually for a murder or
a dead body that has been found. It was featured on Challenge Anneka once, where the challenge was to
refurbish a community boat which was on dry land. Someone burnt it just as it was finished … and, the people
in the dole office caught all those who were signing on or on the sick, working on the boat by watching the
programme. That’s Millom! It has its characters too, which, in my mind, make Last of the Summer Wine look
like a party political broadcast. Millom was ticking along, heading in the direction of nowhere (I know, Now-
Here) so, did the locals want it on the map? … Sure they did and, events were approaching to do just that. The
trouble was, Millom didn’t have the ability to laugh at itself (I’m hoping that’s changed).
It’s twelve years now since I first found the newspaper article on a bus which I was driving (that’s a story
in itself … Bus Driving’s Easy! You just sit on your butt and turn the wheel … Wonky Bookshop –
www.frankie-lassut.com) … I picked up on it straight away (obviously ‘given’ to me? But not the time scale). It
concerned the plight of a policeman, PC Terence McGlennon, who was that pissed off at being sent to “End of
the Line” Millom, that he sued the force and won! Millom got some National stick in the press and I widdled
myself laughing and didn’t stop for months while I wrote an account of “why it’s much worse that what they
think” (in a nice way).
But really, it is a quiet town. There again, I don’t know of many that have street parties every weekend
and firework shows every night celebrating their heritage or, the person or thing that put them on the map in the
first place. People go about their business then, go home and watch TV at night or, maybe go out for a drink. It
doesn’t really have a Lady Godiva or the ‘top’ tourist draw Coventry have – i.e. a bombed Cathedral (they still
hate the Germans), instead Millom has a little known poet called Norman Nicholson and a seafaring author
called Frank Eccles (my Headmaster from lots of years ago … he tried to encourage me to write, I was nowhere
near ready), who few have heard of.
They once had the Ironworks which they hang onto, which was the thing that grew the town in the first
place, apparently a load of Cornish tin miners got wind of the ore and, they came and settled (sounds like the
Wild West). The town is in two halves separated by a railway line which has a bridge running over it which is
the separator and, it obviously has its characters just like everywhere else. So, it’s just a town in a cloud of
Northern towns … so maybe the copper is right; it’s the End of the Line, being on a pinnacle. Maybe people
‘will’ actually fall off the edge of the world there.
