Scratching Shed Publishing

Rugby League, Rock’n’Roll, The Road and Me

by Steve Mascord

Steve Mascord – born Andrew John Langley – was obsessed with rugby league and rock’n’roll. Long after almost everyone he knew, he clung to these things like twin teddybears, turning at least one of them into a career and making a bit of money out of the other.

At the age of 47 he owned precisely nothing aside from hundreds of records and CDs and almost every edition of Rugby League Week ever printed. He was unmarried, had no car or property and was the proud owner of $50,000 of credit card debt. Then one day he discovered the truth about himself.

He always knew he was adopted but it turned out he was part of a bohemian family, his mother forced to give him up after suffering a mental breakdown. She searched for him until her dying day. Steve met uncles and cousins and aunties he never knew existed and for the first time in his life he felt whole. And he looked around that storage room full of CDs and football magazines and felt sad; a sense of loss. He appeared in newspapers and on radio and television and people thought he was successful but had he really created a life for himself? Or was he living in a childhood fantasy, compensating for what had been missing, ready to fall down on top of him as traditional media imploded?

Steve thought ‘enough of being Steve Mascord, who is not a real person. Time to finally be Andrew John Langley’. Having figuratively thrown all his toys out of the cot, he decided to conduct an audit. Which ones to pick up off the floor and keep in his new life, and which to leave laying there forever.

In the Footsteps of Laurie Lee

By Dave Hadfield

It was the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Keneally, who described Dave Hadfield as ‘The Poet of Rugby League’. True enough, though the man who has also been called Bolton’s answer to Bill Bryson has equally revelled in other subjects, like music and travel.

Lost in Spain is the result of the dying wish of his oldest friend’s wife, Barb, to have her ashes scattered along the route traced by Laurie Lee when he walked from Gloucestershire to the Mediterranean in the 1930s.

That original journey provided the material for As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, the book upon which, as well as Cider with Rosie, Lee’s glittering reputation rests.

Lost in Spain is a story of friendship and late-flowering love that is by turns informative, poignant, elegiac and laugh-out-loud funny.

These days freed from the constraints of daily journalism, Hadfield has no plans to stop writing. Of his ten books so far, five have been written since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2008.

Adventures on the Ale – by Tony Thomson

When Tony Thomson decided it was time for York to have its own beer again, he had more than a brewery in mind…

As well as creating a superior beer, the pioneering independent brewer wanted to offer the Minster city’s visitors an alternative attraction – a showpiece brewery with a visitor centre, bar and club.

P**s Up in a Brewery records every step along the way to building a successful business – from the birth of an idea to the search for funding; from hauling a second-hand kit across the Pennines to the improbable task of finding premises within the city walls; from tackling the stern resistance of York landlords to the moment when the new kid on the block captures the industry’s most coveted awards.

Alongside the drama is the humour associated with building a business on the simple premise that you like its product. The book’s cast of colourful characters include Tony’s partner in crime, one-time burger-flipper Smithy, and the softly-spoken barman who lets his wooden club do the talking for him. With secretive brewers, a couple of ghosts and a lass on a hen party determined to down a yard of ale also in the mix, you have something between a soap opera, a business plan and a sitcom.

By Simon Jenkins

Join the Yorkshire Evening Post’s award-winning beer writer Simon Jenkins on a criss-cross pub crawl through Leeds, calling in at dozens of popular watering holes.

Along with descriptions of the beers, pubs and adventures the author encounters along the way, The Great Leeds Pub Crawl also contains fascinating asides about local history, the story of brewing in the city, and it suggests plenty of alternative routes to keep even the thirstiest pub-crawler satisfied.

Comprehensively revised and updated, with even more magnificent colour photos, this is a book that no visitor to – or resident of – Yorkshire’s biggest city can afford to be without. An ale trail with a difference, it looks at no less than 63 pubs in detail and many more in passing.

This is an entertaining, informative and at times surprising tour of one of Britain’s most vibrant metropolises. Whether you are after a quiet pint, a lively night out, a chat with friendly locals, the odd cocktail or a quality bite to eat, The Great Leeds Pub Crawl is the guide for you.

A Guide to Yorkshire’s Limestone Wonderland

By Stephen C. Oldfield

The Yorkshire Dales are dominated by majestic mountain Ingleborough and its neighbours Penyghent and Whernside. Familiar to charity fund-raisers as the ‘Three Peaks’ of marathon walks, their inner secrets remain largely unknown.

In A Three Peaks Up and Under Stephen C. Oldfield explores every corner of this enigmatic landscape in riveting detail. No stone is left unturned – revealing the awe-inspiring shafts of great potholes, the legendary caves and waterfalls, as well as archaeological treasures that inspired explorers of years gone by.

After outlining the origins of these karst masterpieces, life-long walker and caver Oldfield examines Britain’s finest limestone area with fresh eyes. He uncovers hundreds of highlights from the Boggart of Hurtle Pot to the bone crunching giant of Yordas Cave, from the vastness of Gaping Gill to the rib-bending confines of the Cheese Press.

Laced with humour and personal touches that are bound to have even serious cave explorers chuckling into their beers, its chapters take the reader up onto the peaks and plateaus, and then down into the easiest ‘wild’ caves of the area – resulting in a new level of intimacy with this great landscape. A Three Peaks Up and Under will sow the seeds for many years of adventure in this magical area.