Women are from Venus
Men are from Mytholmroyd
A copy of the book Women are from Venus, Men are from Mytholmroyd popped through my door this week with an invitation from John Morrison to review it on the Mytholmroyd web site AND to be "as rude as you like".
With trepidation and po faced I opened the book and read the "Introduction" to find that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Mytholmroyd - the title had sprung from his subconscious and everyone who heard it laughed themselves daft.
| "The title, at least is good.. I had a favourable reaction from all the people I tried it out on. If the timing was spot-on - when they had a pint raised to their lips - I could get them to spew beer over a gratifyingly wide area." |
It is in fact more on "Milltown" the town that featured in a trio of books - View From The Bridge, Back To The Bridge and A Bridge Too Far. Episodes of the books could and can still be read online on the Hebden Bridge web and books ordered direct from Pennine Pens, 32 Windsor Road, Hebden Bridge HX7 8LF.
John Morrison is wickedly funny - I laughed a lot when I read View from the Bridge. I walked round reading large chunks of it out to people who didn't always want to hear it or find it vaguely funny. So that when I read in this book (in the first chapter):
| "Farmers had their own quirky sayings, such as "Red sky at night, farm's alight" . |
and
| "it was reckoned to be unlucky for a millhand to thrust an arm into a carding machine." |
I was off again chuckling at the sheer (somebody else said this before me) unhinged hilarity. Religion the remix at page 56 with "Stainless Steel Steve" the eager to please vicar and the suggestions that Gammon PLC might allow us to amalgamate God and Mammon - is equally audacious and irreverant.
However it isn't about Mytholmroyd - a mixed blessing, as should he cast his eye round our village and find us worthy of a book we will all take cover.
If you liked the previous 3 books and want more of the same - then buy it - but it you think its about Mytholmroyd don't - and count your blessings it's not.
Oh - and thanks to John for my copy - it livened up an otherwise quiet Monday morning.
Frances Robinson