STUDENTS of the death notices, which for life affirming reasons means almost everyone, will have noticed a first last Monday. The deceased was quoted.

Oswin James Kendall – “in his own words” – had died reluctantly. He was 77, had lived all his life at Reeth, in Swaledale and appeared several times hereabouts.

Perhaps as memorable, though not included for reasons which will become apparent, were some of his final words to his nurse. “It’s a bugger this dying, isn’t it?” he said.

James Kendall was one of those vividly colourful, candidly outspoken, community conscious characters – a true local hero – whom life loses reluctantly, too.

Known to old hands as Corky, he’d worked in the family butcher’s business, turned successfully to farming, was ever conscious of the need to protect the true Dales way of life. When James and a group of young friends threw fireworks into a November 5 meeting of the local council it was doubtless only because its members needed a rocket up their backsides.

He in turn became a parish councillor for 36 years, joined Richmondshire District Council in 1991 – its chairman 11 years later – and served, critically, on the Yorkshire Dales National Park Committee.

The Parks committee favoured conservation areas, and the like. “The one thing you seem not to want to protect,” he told them in 1993, “is the people who live here. People are pig sick of these petty controls. We’re an independent race up here.”

“What he most wanted,” says former fellow councillor Raymond Alderson, “was houses for local people, for local people to come first.”

Kendalls are said to be on the first page of the parish church register, though his son Alan retells the family story that James’s great grandfather came over with Prince Albert, and led the orchestra at his wedding to Victoria.

James himself was one of many generations who played cornet with Reeth Band, and for more than 50 years was bugler at the village Armistice service.

We’d reported in 2010 his successful attempt to have a plaque erected in memory of the Reconnaissance Corps unit stationed from 1940-43 in the village – “most people in Reeth probably know more about the Hartlepool monkey than they do about what happened here during the war,” he said – and last year on his campaign similarly to remember the two Royal Canadian Air Force crew killed when a Wellington bomber smashed into Fremington Edge, above the village, in 1943.

“If we don’t do something soon, there’ll be no one left who remembers it at all,” said James. Parish council clerk Ian Scott believes that battle almost to have been won, too.

His funeral, at Grinton parish church last Saturday, heard a marvellous eulogy from lifelong friend and Richmond estate agent Norman Brown. “James was Reeth,” he said, “and Reeth was James.”

NORMAN Brown told of the time that James had been charged with smoking out a wasps’ next and ended up burning down the tree. “I think it was one of the reasons he was never allowed to join Reeth fire brigade,” he said. “He was much better at starting fires than putting them out.”

He’d also been an enthusiastic rugby man, making just two appearances for the village football team – when they were a man short – and on both occasions being sent off.

It was in the pub after another rugby occasion that he found himself standing on a table conducting an impromptu choir of 50 Welshmen, who became so enraged upon discovering his true roots that they cut the table from beneath him.

The dalesman responded with what might be termed a digital translation of an Anglo-Saxon expression and with a rendition of There’ll Always Be an England. Norman remembered it well. “He was lucky to get out alive.”

At Twickenham, against New Zealand, he’d sit among the England supporters wearing All Blacks shirt and scarf. “That was James,” said his eulogist, “he always was a bit different.”

ALAN Kendall supposes that his dad may have had in mind Spike Milligan’s famous last words – “I told them I was ill” – but many more have gone out by leaving a quotation mark. The column recalls ten of the most memorable.

“Pardonnez moi, monsieur” – Marie Antoinette, having accidentally stood on the executioner’s foot on the way to the guillotine.

“I’d rather be skiing” – bowler hatted comedian Stan Laurel.

“Bugger Bognor” – King George V (allegedly), told he could enjoy a nice recuperation at Bognor Regis.

“Let not poor Nelly starve” – Charles II remembers those to whom he was indebted.

“Die, my dear doctor. That’s the last thing I shall do” – Lord Palmerston.

“I hope I haven’t bored you” – Elvis.

“Am I dying or is this my birthday?” – Lady Nancy Astor briefly awakes to find lots of family around her bed.

“I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies” – William Pitt (allegedly).

“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” – General John Sedgwick. (They did.)

“I’ll show you that it won’t shoot” – R&B singer Johnny Ace claims on stage that his gun’s not working. (It was.)

THERE’S also a Reeth link to this one – a Cockfield connection, too – but really it’s a case of Biggles flies again.

Across in Marske-by-the Sea there’s a proposal to open one of those new-fangled micro-pubs – mega business, these days – to be named after Captain W E Johns’s fabled flying ace.

Johns, as these columns have hitherto recalled, took off as a Royal Flying Corps 2nd lieutenant based at Marske Aerodrome in the First World War and generally flying by the seat of his pants.

He had forced landings on three successive days, shot lumps off the bath house, the wind tower, a couple of hangars and even the sick bay and flew into a fellow officer’s house.

“From the amount of crashes he had, it appears he must have been a liability rather than an asset to the Allied cause,” wrote his biographer.

In modern day Marske, however, it’s not the ghost of James Bigglesworth – or his creator – which worries them, but the effect on the established order of things.

As former Redcar and Cleveland council leader David Walsh points out, the main street seems always to have had three pubs – known almost universally as the Top House, Middle House and Bottom House.

It’s the same in Reeth, though a village green on a hill makes to easier to remember which is which. Cockfield had three, too, one of which remains. Locals still call it the Bottom House.

David Walsh reckons that the Biggles, if licensing's approved, may have to become the Lower Middle, though that could be a class issue. In Reeth they don’t yet have that problem – but James Kendall would probably have been in his element.