Last updated at 11:17, Thursday, 09 October 2008

ON THE TOON: Angy Morton models the haute couture wedding dress made out of recycled Newcastle United shirts

A LAKELAND fashion designer has created a haute couture wedding dress out of recycled Newcastle United shirts in protest at the continuing chaos at the club.

Angy Morton and her husband Mike are both Newcastle United fans but decided to tear up their shirts after Kevin Keegan left the club. Angy, who runs her own fashion design business near Windermere, has now turned the shirts into a haute couture wedding dress.

She says: “Newcastle United fans have a real love-hate relationship with their team at the moment. So I thought tearing up the shirts and turning them into a wedding dress was a good way to express how we feel.

“Many fans are finding it difficult to wear their shirts with pride with the way things are going at the moment but ultimately there’s no escape because they are really married to football and the team!”

The dress will feature in a fashion show at Rheged near Penrith tomorrow and Saturday, together with a number of other contemporary designs by Angy.

Recycling is a theme that features strongly in her work. She says: “A lot of clothing gets thrown out because we’ve grown tired of it or because something new comes along. I like to think how I can make a beautiful new outfit or perhaps a bag out of these things.

“The Newcastle United shirts are a good example. Two new shirts are brought out every year but what happens to all the old ones? Many of them probably get thrown out or just end up at the back of a cupboard. It’s such a waste when we could be doing something new and exciting with them.”

New theories on the 1928 Corlett murder

OUR article last week on the Sarah Corlett murder of 1928 generated a lot of interest – and also a new theory as to who really murdered the farm girl.

First, we can report that, contrary to the belief of the American descendant we quoted, most of the Gill family stayed in the area.

Indeed one of Gill’s descendants, Elizabeth Jackson Gill, became a magistrate. She was also the first headmistress at Ehenside School.

Two descendants of victim Sarah Corlett phoned The Whitehaven News and revealed an oral family tradition that it was the farmer’s wife, Mary, who really killed 19-year-old Sarah. Tradition has it that she found Sarah and her husband together and, in anger, killed the girl. But her husband, Robert, “took the blame” for the murder so she could live on and bring up the children.

It’s an intriguing theory but doesn’t seem to fit the facts laid out in the police papers, now made public after 80 years of secrecy. If he was going to take the rap, one would have expected his suicide note to claim he had killed Sarah. But it did not. Instead it emphasises his innocence. This would have left the potentially disastrous scenario of police discovering Mary had killed Sarah and Mary ending up being hanged anyway.

As with all ‘unsolved’ crimes, it leaves plenty of space for speculation and theorising – none of which is ever likely to be proved one way or the other.

A new sense of direction at Sellafield?

INTERESTING to hear what the new chairman of the all powerful NDA had to say on the new buy-the out managers of Sellafield.

UK Nuclear facilities Monitor recently put to Stephen Henwood: “The recently completed competition for the new PBO at Sellafield is a huge contract. In what ways and how quickly do you expect to see new management influence operations?”

Mr Henwood replied: “Sellafield being run by an organisation that was going to cease to exist has been a difficult situation. I think the sense that Sellafield is being directed by someone with a 17 year horizon will make a big difference in the way that people engage in things. There has been a sense of the end an era and what we will get to in November is the start of an era.”

“The impact of a new PBO will be progressive. People will know there has been a change in a positive sense. We have a clear plan worked up with the PBO; a programme of work that we want them to get on with quickly. We know that the incoming PBO will bring its own tools (project management) that we want to see deployed quickly. We want confirmation of a robust baseline for the site. There is a contractual obligation to produce that. What we will see quickly is a better understanding of what is going on at the site. There will be increased projectisation which will drive performance and efficiency. What I’ve seen at Sellafield is people wanting an end to uncertainty. The sooner there is a sense of direction on the site the better.”

Well that’s cleared the air.

Like a warlord from outer space, Your Honour...

FROM this week, judges at county courts like Whitehaven’s can go bare headed. After much discussion senior judges in civil and family courts will wear newly designed robes – minus the wigs.

Verdicts are mixed on the new dark blue gaberdine robe with velvet facings: it has been described as making judges look like “warlords from outer space” or a “cross between a Star Trek costume and a fascist storm-trooper’s uniform”. But for the ‘real’ court room dramas of criminal cases lawyers and judges will carry on as usual in traditional wigs and gowns.

Trouble and strife: a sad sign of the times

I WAS flicking through a national hair magazine, as you do, when I was intrigued to find an advert for an illicit encounters website in the adverts.

The bizarre half page advert started with: “Married but want more? In a relationship but feel trapped?”

It then went on to advertise a website where apparently all your needs can be met. But it was the small print that amused me most:

“Warning: Not everyone is suited to having an affair. They are not an alternative to working on or ending a marriage. Not all affairs have a positive effect on a marriage, some can be very damaging. Always consider other people and if you are going to have an affair, please select your partner wisely.”

First published at 16:05, Wednesday, 08 October 2008
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