Keir

 

Sir Keir Starmer, Britain's current prime-minister and the proud leader of our Labour Party was born into a working class family in  1962.  Auspiciously, he was named after Keir Hardie, the first  parliamentary leader of the Labour Party (1906-1908).

Sir Keir married Victoria Alexander in 2007  and they have two teenage children who have been effectively kept away from the often crazed glare of modern publicity.

The Labour Party were voted back into power last summer. In the three years before that election, Sir Keir had done a great job of remodelling the party - rooting out the excesses of left wing extremism to make the party electable once again.

Once a very successful lawyer, he became our country's Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008. In that role, he had many thorny legal cases to handle - including dealing with terrorists from Northern Ireland and elsewhere. In this job, he proved himself to be a great team leader and a dedicated public servant.

Until quite recently, Keir loved playing football and he has always been a keen Arsenal supporter. His love affair with football goes back to his boyhood whereas most Conservative politicians are only pretend supporters - perhaps thinking incorrectly that this might endear them to the general public.

Football is of course a team game in which every club pulls together - including coaching staff, groundsmen, cleaners and last but not least - the players. Keir recognises that in the way that he does politics. It's not all about him. He can only be a good leader with a good team to lead.

Historically, Labour is really the only political party that has ever consciously tried to improve the lot of ordinary men and women. Whereas Labour is proud of its strong links with trade unions, the ruling class - spearheaded by The Conservative Party - frequently try to use this connection as a weapon to beat Labour with.

Little more than six months have passed since Labour came back into power. Of course from the outset, Conservative-leaning media channels have sought to denigrate Labour's best efforts to get a grip on the nation's economic well-being and future prospects. It has not helped that they have had to address the damage caused by the Conservative-led "Brexit" from The European Union.

Last Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer had the exceedingly difficult task of meeting the new American president without vomiting. On the agenda was the Ukraine war and trading relations between our countries. It is widely agreed that Sir Keir walked that difficult tightrope with diplomatic aplomb. However, the following day he had to watch the Ukraine crisis deepen with the metaphorical mugging of President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

Keir Starmer is a good man, leading this country through troubling times. Unlike the cartoon character known as Boris Johnson, Keir does his homework and seeks  to lead us forward with dignity and professionalism. There will be more ruts in the road ahead and more mud-slinging from right wingers and their newspapers but I believe he has the character, resilience and outlook necessary to deal effectively with future political challenges while always keeping an eye on the well-being of ordinary citizens - the very reason he entered politics in the first place.

Awards

Charli XCX - real name Charlotte Emma Aitchison

Over the weekend, you had The Brit Awards at the O2 Arena in London and The Oscars at The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. In case you were not aware of this, The Brit Awards are concerned with popular music. In a previous post, I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's "best song" award at this year's Grammys.  The "best song" at The Brit Awards went to Charli XCX  for "Guess" - featuring Billie Eilish.

Here are the opening lyrics of "Guess":-

You wanna guess the color of my underwear

You wanna know what I got going on down there

Is it pretty in pink or all see-through?

Is it showing off my brand new lower back tattoo?

You wanna put 'em in your mouth, pull 'em all down south

You wanna turn this shit out, that's what I'm talking about

Pu-pu-put 'em in your mouth, pull 'em all down south

You wanna turn this shit out, that's what I'm talking about

And here are Charli XCX and Billie Eilish performing this winning song on video. 

The Oscars Ceremony was screened live on ITV over here in Great Britain. I didn't have the stamina to watch it all but I stayed up till 2am and saw half the show. The whole event appeared slick and well-choreographed.

I had to wait until this morning when I woke bleary-eyed and discovered that "Anora" was the big winner. It's not a film I have seen and I do not plan to make a special visit to the cinema to watch it. To tell you the truth, the theme does not appeal to me and the fact that the word "fuck" is used 479 times in this film is something that I find distinctly unappealing.

Admittedly, I belong to a generation of Britons that witnessed the condemnation of  Alf Garnett's occasional use of "bloody" in the sixties sit-com "Till Death Us Do Part".

Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett

How far we have come since then. 

By the way, "Till Death Us Do Part" directly inspired the American TV sitcom, "All in the Family" with narrow-minded Archie Bunker to some extent mimicking the Alf Garnett role.

Finally, today sad news surfaced about the death at 73 of the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano. From humble origins on Scotland's east coast,  he came late to Art but gradually developed his own style of painting and made a very good living from it. His exotic surname, Vettriano, was  his mother's maiden name. He adopted it long before he became famous.

Below - "Uneasy Meeting" by Jack Vettriano:-

Sunshine

Seems it never rains in southern Yorkshire

Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before

It never rains in old South Yorkshire

But girl, don't they warn ya?

It pours, man, it pours

Please see the personalised weather forecast above - courtesy of the BBC News website. I snipped it this morning to share with you and other blog readers. Oh my-oh-my, it lifts one's spirits to see all those bright sun icons. After all, this is not southern California you know!

To explain the snip... S11 stands for Sheffield 11 - the postal district in which our luxury mansion is located. It is one of the most desirable postal districts in the city. Sheffielders know that and we also know that districts like S6 and S2 are at the other end of the desirability spectrum for different reasons - including poverty and deprivation.

You can also see today's forecasts for Worksop, Tideswell, Penistone and Chesterfield.  I requested those locations because they are each about fourteen  miles from this house. Tideswell is to the west, Worksop is to the east, Penistone is to the north and Chesterfield is to the south. Knowing what is going on weatherwise in my region has frequently determined my walking plans.

Our little bed of garden daffodils is now blooming. They enjoy a nice sunny and sheltered spot. Each year there is a small amount of proliferation. Their annual awakening tells us that winter is pretty much done though there can always be frosts and snowfalls in March.

The lyrics at the top were adapted from the 1972 song by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood - "It Never Rains in Southern California". It is as if a showbiz aspirant is writing home from Los Angeles and being rather economical with the truth. One of the verses suggests that things might not quite be as good as he had hoped they might be...

Out of work, I'm out of my head

Out of self respect, I'm out of bread

I'm underloved, I'm underfed

I wanna go home

Of course, this also explains "it pours man, it pours" in the chorus. The song reached number 2 in the US billboard charts but number 1 in both Spain and Japan. For your interest or pleasure, here it is...

Onomamania

The term onomamania  describes an obsession with names. Though I swear I do not need a straitjacket, I have always been a bit crazy about names.

When I was a boy of nine or ten, I invented a game that I could play on my own involving dice and made-up football teams. With the help of a road atlas, I picked the team names - usually with my eyes closed. Each team in the league required eleven players and to name them required a telephone directory.

Again - with my eyes closed - I would hit upon a random page and use my index finger to find each player's name. Hence "Hunstanton Town" might be represented by:-

Reed (goalkeeper), Barlow, Riley, Wilcox, Moon, Godfrey, Brague, Edwards, Gray,  Slatten and Taylor (captain).

The game against "Cleckheaton Rovers" would be played with the aid of the dice and all scores would be recorded in my notebook. Maybe Dunham would score the winner for Cleckheaton. A lot of my pleasure  was derived from the initial  naming processes.

Moving on, as a teenager, I spent far too long dreaming up names for imaginary pop or rock groups - Miles of Smiles, The Reserves, Red River Panic, Crisis, Suburban Heroes. More recently I came up with Flying Debris which echoes back to those name dreaming days.

When a baby is born, I like to know his or her name and then I will roll it over in my mind and decide whether or not I like it. Will it be suitable?   Two years ago, over in Ireland, my nephew Kevin fathered a boy called Finn and that name certainly passed my approval test. So did the names  Phoebe, Zachary and Margot - though Margot could have easily been a Poppy. Poppy is a girl's name that irks me even though I think  it is fine for dogs, cats and even white mice .

Many first  names  have sudden bursts of popularity and then slip out of fashion. I witnessed this a lot as a secondary school teacher. Take those two nice men yesterday - Dean and Ashley. Those forenames date them for nowadays hardly anybody names their sons Dean or Ashley. Today's top names for boys in Great Britain are Noah, Oliver, George and Leo with Muhammad coming at the top of the list.

Top girls' names are Amelia, Isla, Lily and Freya with Olivia coming at the top. My mother was called Doreen and my grandmothers were named Phyllis and Margaret. Almost nobody picks such names any more.

Maybe I need expert help or counselling to suppress my onomamania but I guess that there are worse obsessions I could have - like meticulous housekeeping or fashion consciousness for example.

Tibshelf

Very often, I don't talk to anybody else on my country walks and explorations but today's adventure began differently. 

At Tibshelf Cemetery in eastern Derbyshire, I met the two men shown above. They are Dean and Ashley and they work for Tibshelf Parish Council. As well as maintaining the cemetery, they have several other responsibilities within the parish and often receive instructions from councillors.

Dean has worked for Tibshelf since 2002 and Ashley joined him eleven years ago. I conversed with them for twenty minutes or so . They were both proud of the fact that they had never had a single day off for illness and I was struck by the pride they clearly had in caring for Tibshelf come rain or shine.

After they had driven off in their van, I took the following picture of Nethermoor Cottages and then walked back into the cemetery grounds.

There was only one other person there - a lone man leaning over his car door and looking at a floral display that spelled out the word, "Sister". He raised his hand to me in greeting and said "Hello". He was probably my age or a little older.

Soon we were engaged in a conversation about the death of his wife. Seems like she had complained of a pain in her stomach last September. One thing led to another and she died from stomach cancer on January 11th. Her cremation took place in the first week of February.

"It must all feel so raw", I said to him.

He wanted to talk. He seemed quite lost, still not quite believing that she had gone.

"She was always knitting," he said. "And I miss the clicking of those needles when I am watching the telly. It's so quiet now."

They had been married for forty nine years - not quite making their golden wedding anniversary. He confided in me that she had not been able to bear children but they had been very happy together all the same. They had a touring caravan that they often took to the coast.

"Look after yourself," I said as I left him with his reflections. "Keep going!"

"I'm not sure I can," he replied with a slightly ominous grimace.

Soon I was in Newton, a former mining village that is just half a mile south east of Tibshelf. I spotted the street sign shown above and would love to know for sure why that street acquired such an unusual name - Wire Street. The 1888 map of the area offers no clue.

Above - Newton Methodist Church which would have once enjoyed a congregation of coal miners with their families. Below, an old cottage opposite St John the Baptist Church in Tibshelf. This would certainly have predated the age of coal.

Procrastination

My To Do List

Take Clint to body repairer re. long scratch along passenger side

Arrange test drive in new Hyundai Bayon

Contact roofer re. lost slates at back

Dig over vegetable plot

Go and see Bert for catch up

Get a beer and a slice of pork pie from the fridge

Make new hanging bird table to replace old one

Read "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

Plan holiday to Nova Scotia

Make "Welcome to Yorkshire" sign for Ringinglow Road

Tidy up this computer desk

Sort out photo files on computer

+

Find portable hard drive I was given as a present

Re-string my guitar

Replace gate at top of the garden

Weigh myself ready for NHS  lung screening call next week

Use £400 hotel voucher I was given for my 70th birthday

Create a pen and ink picture of Phoebe's cuddly sloth - Monty

Plan a Friday photo-walk in the sunshine

Write a blogpost titled "Procrastination" with pressing items that are (amusingly) crossed out using the "strike through"icon

Speed

In Great Britain, speed restrictions mean that the maximum speed  you can legally travel at on our public roads is seventy miles per hour. Go above that speed and you are liable to receive a hefty fine or points on your licence that may result in a driving ban.

It is not unusual. This is the same in most other countries,

As some of you may recall, my motor vehicle is a silver Hyundai i20 called Clint. When driving him along, I stick strictly to the speed limits in built-up areas. However, when out on the motorways I confess that  I will sometimes push Clint's speed up to 80mph. Thousands of drivers do the same. This is also not unusual.

As it happens, a Hyundai i20 is very capable of travelling at 116mph. That is its official top speed even though Clint's speedometer suggests a maximum of 220mph.

Clint is an ordinary, economical car manufactured for the mass market like all of his siblings. However, many car models are souped-up and styled like racing cars. At the top of this page you can see the fastest road car in the world. It is produced in Sweden. It is the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut which has a top speed of 310mph and incidentally will set you back  £2.3 million.

310mph is well over four times Britain's maximum speed limit so I simply ask, what the hell is the point of owning such a car?  Legally, you will never be able to test the car's capacity for speed.

On the one hand you have governments, the police and road safety organisations urging drivers to stick to the speed limits. On the other hand, you have car makers producing cars that possess the ability to totally smash designated speed restrictions.

What is going on? Surely manufacturers should be warned in no uncertain terms not to make cars that tempt fate with regard to speed. It is very easy to blame drivers but surely car makers are largely to blame for selling cars that encourage drivers to go fast - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, Bugatti. McLaren - but also the mass market producers - Ford, Kia, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota and the rest.

If "they" were really serious about addressing speed on our roads, "they" would ban the production of souped-up racing cars and even common cars like Clint would not have the ability to go beyond 100mph.

There are men and women who go all starry-eyed about speedy motor cars and for some, owning such a vehicle is perhaps their prime goal in life. - their dream. I am not one of those people. Usually, I do not think about cars very much at all and I am not even slightly interested in the Formula One circus nor car programmes like "Top Gear".

To me, cars should be all about getting people efficiently from point A to point B, preferably burning  as little fuel as possible, not speeding along like a racing driver. There - I have said my bit. What do you think?