ARE THERE YET MORE SURPRISES UP MY SLEEVES?

THIS landlocked area’s love of the sea started in 1887, when Huddersfield citizens raised the funds for a lifeboat, named after the town, that was based in Norfolk.

The Jesse Lumb Lifeboat – named after the textile businessman with mills at Folly Hall – followed in 1939 and, three years ago, the Frank and Anne Wilkinson Lifeboat, funded by a legacy left by the Huddersfield couple, was launched at Scarborough.

I asked if there had been any further connections with the RNLI and David Bailey reminds us that when the late Donald White was Mayor of Kirklees in 1979/80, his named charity was a lifeboat appeal.

The Atlantic 21 Class lifeboat, named Kirklees, was launched at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in Northumberland in 1982.

Its engines were provided by the Octave Club of Elland. David was treasurer of the appeal committee and was a member of the local back to 1851. Its history shows a commitment to the sea shared by both its men and women. When the lifeboat had to be launched in 1927, most of the crew were already out in fishing vessels so a scratch crew was put together with miners coming off shift. Twenty-five women helped to bodily launch it in heavy seas. Women again stepped forward on a dark night in 1940 when a storm made it impossible for the lifeboat to make way against the tide. It was pulled ashore and volunteers, including 30 women, hauled it a mile-and-a-half across moorland to a safer part of the shore where it was successfully launched and was able to rescue 11 crew members of a stricken ship.

It’s stories like this that makes even land-lubbers proud to be part of a British island race.

The Newbiggin lifeboat website says that, over the years, many service launches had been carried out by the Kirklees boat which had been involved in many different types of rescue.

It was replaced by a larger Atlantic 75 vessel in 1998, moved to Sandown and Shanklin in 2000, and in 2013 became part of Lifeboat Search and Rescue in Northern Ireland. BACK in the summer, whilst shopping in Ireland, I bought a pair of shoes that, I later discovered, consisted of two left feet.

Back to the shop, clutching the box, I went and told an assistant who told the floor manager: “Your man, here, says he has two left feet.”

Which had all three of us looking down at my feet.

The problem was sorted out, after much shoe box searching for the missing right foot.

Such a problem could never happen again, I said. Except that it has now happened with two right gloves.

My wife Maria bought me a pair of what are called Gripper Gloves that have palms with rubbery dimples that, well, grip.

They are useful for driving in cold weather. But this pair has two right hands, which means that my grip with my right hand would be doubly secure if I wore them both, whilst leaving my left hand free for picking my nose.

But it’s not really what I had in mind.

What next? A sweater with three sleeves?