South Elmsall Express (selected highlights)

Honour For Volunteer

A Hemsworth man who is helping to make a difference in his community has been presented with a whistle from a top police chief. James Webster, who is profoundly deaf, volunteers at the Hemsworth District Partnership and was keen to meet Sir Norman Bettison when he visited the town last month. But the 21-year-old missed out on the chance and was instead presented with a whistle by Inspector Jackie Turton on Sir Norman’s behalf.

New Asda Supermarket a Triumph

The carnival came to town on Wednesday. No, not the annual visit of Tuckers’ Feastly Fun Fayre, returned to Kirkby Green for the 149th straight year and still running its original Victorian Waltzers – the real festival this week was the opening of the new Asda supermarket on the site of the old GT Smiths. Man, it was as though people had never seen a supermarket before! From the moment the doors opened at 8am to the sad second they closed upon empty shelves and exhausted staff some twelve hours later, in they streamed, the hordes, like the peasants of a post-communist Romania finally able to get their hands on something other than a turnip. The atmosphere was somewhere between a giant village party, the recent London lootings, and the panic buying of a fuel crisis. By the end of the day it was estimated some 95% of the local population had squeezed their ample frames through Asda’s state-of-the-art automatic doors.

I cruised past around 10 in the morning, witnessing the celebration first hand. New shoppers, late to the party, desperately pushed their way through the crowds that stood outside, their shopping trolleys filled to the brim, clearly reluctant to leave. They compared the prizes they had emerged with like Africans after the hunt, dazed and shining faces speaking of the unfathomability of what had been experienced within the inner-sanctum. They had touched on something holy, something sacred. They were wanderers returned from a voyage to a new and startling land. One woman told me how she had given up shopping some three weeks ago, in anticipation of this day, and had lived merely on a supply of tinned prunes left to her in her grandma’s will. This was more than the opening of a supermarket: this was the entering into of a new age of wonder and enlightenment.

Eighteen years ago the last lump of coal was dragged from the earth beneath Frickley Colliery, and for eighteen years we have dwelled in the darkness of disappointment and hurt. Eighteen years without a proper supermarket. Eighteen jobless years lying slumped on the couch in front of the TV of despondency. And eighteen years of Netto, shuffling together down its stark, narrow aisles, filling cardboard boxes – no trolleys – with brandnames even our mongrel dogs turned their noses up at, unable to find within its four flaking walls but a fraction of the vitamins our children required to avoid growing up pale-faced and scowling. Now those eighteen years are over, the siege has been lifted, and to all who witnessed it, it was a triumph of the spirit, and a tribute to the lives of the brave, fallen souls who had given their all so that we might dream of days like these. It is little wonder that tears were shed: to the natives who turned out in their thousands, it was as though civilisation itself had returned to South Elmsall.

South Elmsall Scoops National Award

It’s official: South Elmsall has the most Neanderthalic parents in the country. In a survey of over one hundred thousand towns, cities and villages South Elmsall topped the list for the first time in nearly two hundred years. Elmsall swept the board in all but one of the judges’ categories, winning first prize in belittling, hitting, bullying, not listening to, overreacting, and shouting at, failing only to land the award for parent-to-child stabbings, which went, unsurprisingly, to the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Parents who drank Tenants Extra and watched more than nine hours of television were especially commended for their ability to destroy their children’s spirits – which will no doubt lead to many generations of Neanderthalic parenting in the future. Here’s to all who have helped put South Elmsall on the map and to continued success in this field for years to come.