MY cousin-in-law Cath – she’s married to cousin Neil – tells me that in ‘The Ashley Book of Knots’ there is an illustration of what is known as the Cringle Knot and it says: ‘A Cringle will make an excellent emergency handle for a suitcase.’
The implication is that it’s no use for anything else.
But it’s something, even though it’s not what a thinking man needs in terms of lasting recognition of his name . . .
For instance, I have always wanted to be like Buck with his Road and Corrin with his Folly and Victoria with her Pier.
They are all long gone from us now but I’m sure that wherever they might be they will be resting easy in the knowledge that their names live on.
Of course, there is the Cringle Reservoir and the Cringle Plantation and Cringle Park.
They are in honour of some other Cringle or Cringles. I have always wanted to make my own way in this connection. But I have often wondered how to do it.
If I was a medical man there would be the possibility of discovering a new disease as did Alzheimer, Parkinson and Crone.
But Cringle’s Disease doesn’t really work well.
Imagine saying: ‘I’ve got Cringle’s.’ It would be like when Eric Morecambe was asked during his and Ernie’s Roman sketch if he had the scrolls and he replied: ‘No. I’ve always walked like this.’
A prize? Think of Nuffield and Nobel. But I haven’t got the money.
Plants might be easier. Forsyth made it with forsythia and Buddle – the Rev. Adam Buddle – made it with buddleia. But I’m no botanist.
What I am is a Manxman and I have often pondered about following Buck’s example with Cringle Street or Cringle Road or Cringle Avenue or Cringle Lane. But Buck, whoever he was, is still one up on me.
There’s also Cringle’s End. But that’s something I don’t like to think about just yet.
Cringle’s Law? A fundamental scientific truth following in the tradition of Newton, Boyle and Ohm? This calls for scientific skills and at Douglas High School I took to science like a duck to orange sauce and was soundly beaten for it.
What about a public house? I have spent many long years on licensed and unlicensed premises. I have always fancied walking into the Cringle Arms.
A bonus would be free drink there for life. But that’s a lot to ask these days, what with the price it is.
But today I am satisfied with Cringle’s Rock sitting in the new edition of Isle of Man plans produced by the Department of Infrastructure.
It is even more satisfying, in my self-appointed role of Her Majesty’s Apostropher General in the Isle of Man, to observe the position of the apostrophe.
That rock is nobody else’s. It’s mine, all mine.
If anybody else wants to lay claim to it they can get knotted.
• RICHARD Hetherington, a regular contributor, recalls last week’s story of the 11-year-old boy who flew from Manchester to Rome without passport or ticket or boarding pass or anything else and directs our attention to the website of the airline concerned, Jet2.com.
It says: ‘Live News: Free Child Places.’
• AT the junction in Douglas of Blackberry Lane and Governor’s Road there is a new little traffic island which had a sign near it saying: ‘New traffic calming measures in force.’
The last time I saw this there was a hole in it, put there perhaps by a motorist’s boot.
It hadn’t calmed him down.
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