Sister

My friend - Mike

Okay, so what can I blog about tonight?

I know.

Owing to a change in management, Mick, Mike and I have not been quizzing at "The Hammer and Pincers" in recent weeks on Sunday nights. Instead, we have been going down to "The Robin Hood" at Millhouses. This involves the assistance of two spouses. Shirley takes us down there and Mike's wife - Jill brings us home. It's very kind of them.

Tonight we won the Sunday quiz at "The Robin Hood" and as per usual the three of us got to chat like old fish wives mending nets. We know each other so well and feel very comfortable in each other's company. There's no points scoring and no need for masks. You can say what you want without fear of judgement. Plus - we like each other.

We happened to be talking about care homes and dementia. I happened to ask Mike a question.

"Did your mum die in a care home Mike?"

It was like igniting a pile of firewood.

Mike revealed that on her deathbed, his mother's last words had been, "I'm sorry Michael".

She was an Irish nurse who left County Roscommon just after World War II. She arrived in North Manchester and soon fell in with Mike's father, George. Nature ran its course and quite quickly she was pregnant.

A few months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl who they named Susan. But George was not into the idea of becoming a father or getting married so Susan was put out for adoption.

Later, Mike's mother and father married and set up home together in the town of Oldham. There they raised three children - Mike and his two known sisters. He only learnt about Susan when he was in his mid-sixties.

He told his two other sisters about Susan following their mother's funeral back in Ireland. They had no idea.

The three siblings agreed that they would leave Susan in peace. There was no need to disturb her equilibrium with news about a family from which she had been excluded soon after birth.

However, one of the sisters - the annoying one - soon broke that agreement and off her own bat contacted Susan.

Susan replied that she was on her own in retirement, living a contented life and she had no wish at this late stage in her life to start playing happy families. It might prove too disturbing, too upsetting. Apparently, she lives over in Southport on the Lancashire coast.

And so eight years on from the day Mike's younger sister made contact with Susan, no further communication has happened.

But tonight I couldn't help feeling that the right thing to do would be to reach out to Susan with sensitivity, kindness and love - to bring her back into a family web from which she had been cast off. The woman will be approximately seventy eight years old now. Am I being too damned romantic to feel that it is never too late? Perhaps proper contact would help her to feel truly whole. What do you think?

Fulham

 

Amazing bookshop in Fulham (see below)

We have just got back from London after a quick thirty six hour break.

Sadly, Ian and his girlfriend Sarah broke up just before Christmas. She is the mother of our precious grandson - Zachary. They have sold the £1.2 million house they bought together and now Ian lives in a rental flat in the  Fulham area with Sarah occupying a nearby house that belongs to one of her brothers. He has been posted abroad on military service.

I have not asked many questions about why the split occurred. Maybe they do not really know themselves. Sometimes these things are about feelings and instincts - things you cannot entirely pin down. Both of them want to do their best for Zach and it seems that the parting has been pretty amicable. I have my ideas about what gradually happened to bring about the separation but no other people were involved.

As Zach was staying with Ian for the weekend we booked a hotel room at The Premier Inn near Putney Bridge. It was just a twenty minute walk from Ian's new place.

"Premier Inns" are a well-known hotel chain in Great Britain. They all boast that they are non-smoking establishments. I don't know about you but I detest any odour of stale cigarette smoke in a hotel room. As soon as I walked in Room 405, I could smell the fug - not gross but enough for me to notice.

On the way out, I stopped at reception to let them know. I said we didn't want to swap rooms but I would appreciate a canister of air freshener I could spray  to suppress the foul aroma. The woman on reception ignored my specific request and instead said she would send somebody up to the room.

When we returned to the room at 11pm on Friday night, the smoky smell was still there and the only difference was that a member of housekeeping had cracked open a window. This now ensures that The Great Yorkshire Pudding Hotel Inspector will be composing a scathing written review.

It was nice to see both Zach and Ian. When the little man was in bed on Friday night, we ordered in a scrumptious Vietnamese meal and this morning we met the two of them in Bishops Park where Zach fed the ducks and then we had a pleasant breakfast together in the park cafe.

Zach is really into his little toy cars and even takes them to bed with him. He loves to zoom them around Ian's wooden floors. In contrast, Margot likes to comfort her dollies, changing their nappies and patting their backs. None of the parents consciously encouraged this gender-typical behaviour. Somehow, it just grew.

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Our hotel was near this amazing bookshop in Fulham. I have never been in a bookshop like it. If you love books, Hurlingham Books was a veritable Aladdin's cave. Inside, the secondhand books were stacked from floor to ceiling. I might be wrong but there seemed to be no method or reasoning to the disorganisation, no categories, no alphabetical order just thousands of books piled up on each other. Most of them had their prices written in pencil inside the front cover but many didn't. The little corridor that had formed between the stacks of books was so narrow that two people could not physically pass each other. For entirely successful book perusal I would have required stilts and a torch (American: flashlight).

Scheduled

On Tuesday, I took a walking detour into Sheffield's Botanical Gardens - mostly to see if any spring flowers had burst out of winter. Surprisingly, the carpets of colourful crocuses were still dormant and so only clumps of snowdrops and primroses were evident.

I also took a few close-up photos of the splendid "Pan: Spirit of the Woods" statue that stands in the rose garden area. By the way, the middle picture is not my own. I just inserted it so that you would have some idea of what the statue as a whole looks like.

Below, snowdrops gather around a memorial tree planted in 1993 in memory of  Sheffield resident, William Sutton. Below that some primroses I spotted.

Though I know that I have previously shared pictures of the magnificent Victorian glasshouse designed by Joseph Paxton, here's another one....

Soon after this I walked down Brocco Bank to Endcliffe Park where I took a picture of  The Endcliffe Park Toad by Jason Thomson. It was installed in December 2024 and is made from steel  - replacing an earlier version that was carved from dead wood. Hopefully, the new one will last a lot longer...

Vine

Our Ian and his "BOSH!" mate Henry were on the telly again today. Actually, it has been  quite a while since they were last on. Today they were guests on "The Jeremy Vine Show" on Channel 5. During the live screening of this morning chat show programme, the news broke that "Prince" Andrew had been arrested by police on the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

Fortunately, news of that arrest did not impinge on the "BOSH!" slot. Jeremy Vine was a nice host. He asked thoughtful questions and made Ian and Henry feel comfortable. It was a far cry from the time they were interviewed by self-obsessed Piers Morgan who seemed to be only interested in his own voice. Not the best trait for an effective TV host.

Today, not only did Ian and Henry get to talk about their new book but they also got to play their part in discussing interesting newspaper articles printed this very morning.

"More Plants" is their eighth book. It was published a week ago and as the title suggests it simply shows yet more ways of creating great, tasty vegan meals. 

Ian and Henry have been on their vegan mission for eleven years now. It has been quite a journey. They even have their own Wikipedia page. Go here. Wikipedia fails to mention that they now have products in big "Tesco" supermarkets across the country - in both chilled and freezer sections.

Naturally, Shirley and I are immensely proud of what Ian has done in the last decade. We are heading down to London to see him and our grandson little Zachary tomorrow morning. Consequently, Friday's blogpost will be "scheduled" and that will also be its title.

Writing

 

Phoebe is asleep upstairs. She is five years and one month old. All Sheffield schools are currently on their half term holidays.

Late this afternoon, she showed keen interest in what Grandma was doing on her laptop. In her capacity as secretary of the local Women's Institute, Grandma was writing up some minutes. Phoebe began to help and under close supervision did a line or two of typing.

I invited her into the study to practise her growing writing skills on my desktop computer. I brought up a fresh "Word" page and we agreed that she would make a short Christmas wishlist.

Though I guided her closely, I did not actually touch the keyboard. It was all her own work. This was the very first piece of writing that she has ever done with the aid of a computer keyboard.

When it was done, I turned our printer on and explained to her what she needed to do to create a print off of her work.

Very soon the page was churned out and I showed it to her. With wide eyes, she asked, "How did it do that?" It was a moment of revelation.

As writers, we all have to start somewhere and it seemed to me that those few lines will be the first of thousands to come during the course of her life. It's a significant step forward from slowly writing her own name with a pencil.

The other day I was quite surprised when she used the words "camouflage" and "nocturnal" perfectly correctly. Again her little face lit up when I praised her about this.

An hour ago, I read her a bedtime story as she settled down for the night. It was, "There's No Such Thing As Monsters" by Steve Smallman and Caroline Pedler. I don't know about you but I am not totally sure about the premise of that story. However, at five years and one month old you don't need to learn about the real monsters of present times and history. Not yet anyway. That can wait.

Jesse

"Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up" - Jesse Jackson

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Jesse Jackson shared my birthday so, ridiculously perhaps, I felt something of a bond with him. He knew Martin Luther King Junior well and carried on his work after the great man's assassination. It would have been easier for Jesse Jackson to live a quiet life, away from the media and the hurly burly of current affairs and politics but he chose to stand up and be counted. All his adult life, he fought the good fight in the name of justice, freedom and equality.

If you want to know more details about his life, please go to his Wikipedia page.

Straight after the American presidential election in November 2016, Jesse Jackson wrote an article for "The Guardian" newspaper. Much of what he said was prescient:-

"Based on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the Republican party platform, the social, racial and economic progress America has made over recent decades is in danger: gender equality, the fight for a living wage, affordable healthcare, the struggle for sensible gun control laws, immigration reform and the regeneration of urban communities.

We can only hope he will not govern the way he campaigned – a steady diet of retrograde fantasies and divisive talk about taking the country back. Back to where? When Jim Crow and American apartheid ruled the land; when women could not vote or serve on juries?

I have known Trump for years and, until this bruising campaign, always thought him a decent man. We had our political differences, but I was surprised he turned so quickly and sharply to the right in his quest for power. It saddened and alarmed me that his words resonated so deeply with the racist right that the Ku Klux Klan’s leading newspaper endorsed him."

Although our American cousins are all familiar with the historic  term, "Jim Crow", European and Australian visitors may be puzzled by it so let me explain...

Jim Crow refers to a legalized system of racial apartheid and segregation in the Southern United States from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s. These state and local laws enforced the separation of black and white people in public spaces, including schools, transportation, and restaurants, effectively ensuring a second-class status for African Americans. The term stems from a nineteenth century minstrel character who denigrated black Americans for the amusement of largely white audiences.

Jesse would have been the first to admit that he was imperfect but compared with most public figures, he lived a good life and sought to do what was righteous on behalf of his fellow human beings - not just in America but around the world.

Reflections

At Dale Dyke Reservoir on Saturday, the surface of the water was unusually still. This, along with the sharpness of the light, ensured that any reflections were mirror-like and true. I took several photos.

Above, where small trees have been inundated by a surfeit of water from the surrounding hills, it is hard to see where the trees meet their reflections. Although I took the picture, I also struggle to differentiate between the two. Even when enlarged to full capacity, the image remains a visual brainteaser.

Reflections... Isn't the English language itself a puzzle? We think of reflections in mirrors or water surfaces but of course  there are other kinds of reflection, including: "careful thought about something " which mostly happens within the secret confines of our brains.

Humans devote a lot of time to reflection, mulling things over - sometimes wondering how we might have spoken or acted differently. Reflection often happens upon the pillow at night or in the morning when we wake. It accompanies walks and runs and journeys and unless we are wholly brutish, reflection is impossible to dodge.

I  suppose that I am not unusual in that I tend to reflect much more  upon my mistakes and my failings than upon my achievements and successes. When Edith Piaf sang, "Non, je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing) she was totally out of synch with humanity in  general. To regret nothing is in truth just a wistful notion, a pipe-dream.

Though we cannot change the past, we can certainly kick ourselves for things that we said or did and wish that we could press a rewind button as on an old videotape player. The important thing is not to allow those self-recriminations to overwhelm us, obscuring  our victories and our better traits.

With these thoughts, I find myself reflecting once again. To be alive is a ceaseless puzzle, like the picture at the top of this blogpost.