Details

 

Often you want the wide picture but sometimes it's small details that can reveal a place. Looking back through the photographs I took on Saturday's visit to North Reddish and Bredbury, I have picked out a bunch that focus on details

The top picture is a close-up of Arden Weir on The River Tame. I noticed the riverside vegetation, the reflection of the sky and trees that edge the river and of course the water gushing madly over the edge of the old weir - constructed in the early nineteenth century in connection with Arden Mill - a big corn mill.

Close by, the sign on Arden footbridge reminds us of the potential dangers of open water and yet whenever we have hot spells in this country a few young people's lives end in rivers, reservoirs, canals and gravel pits. Is it the same in  other countries?

Below - remember that tiger moth mosaic made from food lids and  coloured bottletops? Well, this was the explanatory sign in the bottom right hand corner. Why does everything require a QR code these days?

Below - I think it is a pretty confusing image - taken from the towpath of The Peak Forest Canal at Woodley. Two Canada geese were heading my way, disturbing reflections of canalside properties. They probably thought I had food to throw to them but I had none. Why can't Canadians keep their greedy geese in their own spacious country?

A little way on from the geese, I walked under Woodley Railway viaduct and looked up at the intricate stonework. Interesting colours too. That viaduct has stood there since 1863. Another monument to the industriousness of our Victorian forebears.

In Bredbury, I walked by The Conservative Club  and found it rather amusing that they have abbreviated "Conservative" quite appropriately in my view for a "con" is a trick or dishonest plan used to cheat someone out of money. As a verb, it means to deceive or swindle. One thinks of Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and the silly twerp who was PM for just forty nine days - Liz Truss. She  has still not apologised for her economic vandalism and stupidity back in 2022. Perhaps she  was responsible for the window signage - "Est. 202". What?

I am sorry that the sign below was both backlit and dirty. I spotted it in North Reddish Park. It recognises one of The Borough of Stockport's most famous sons - the champion tennis player of the nineteen thirties - Fred Perry.

So yes, they were some of the details of Saturday's walk but I leave you with another image from that day...

It's Woodley Stone Bridge on The Peak Forest Canal. The woman who is approaching on the tow path apologised for spoiling my picture but I advised her that she would enhance it. And we smiled at each other before she went her way and I went mine.

March

On May 1st 1981, five hundred working class British citizens set off walking from Liverpool's pierhead. They were marching to London with purpose. It was "The People's March for Jobs".

One of the main organisers was a fiery trade unionist from Birmingham called Pete Carter. He was admired by many and had a proud history of fighting for workers' rights in what had become Thatcher's Britain. Others felt differently about him - including most members of the ruling class, their newspapers and the aforementioned PM Margaret Thatcher with her deeply conservative cabinet.

Like all public figures, Pete Carter had a private life. He was married with two children - Susan and Michael but that marriage, that family life was breaking apart. Soon Pete would depart, making new relationships and two bitter children who found it difficult to love or forgive him.

Thirty seven  years after the original march, Michael Carter set off from Liverpool with a heavy rucksack and a bunch of ideas. He would follow the exact route of  "The People's March for Jobs" and he would talk to people along the way, observing his surroundings. And he would reflect upon modern Britain and his relationship with his late father. In this process maybe Mike would at last find some peace with Pete Carter.

"All Together Now?" is the story of Mike Carter's long walk but it is also a contemporary portrait of this kingdom, warts and all - focusing on globalisation, immigration, workers' rights, planning laws, industrial history, how the rich get richer while the poor get poorer and personal stuff too. The anger, admiration, hatred and affection that Pete (Mike never calls him Dad) lit in his heart.

I found it a fascinating account and I recognise many of the points that the writer makes about changes in our land. In lots of ways, it is a different country from the one that I grew up in and plenty of those changes are not for the better.

Ar one point this last week I told Shirley that the book was quite depressing, quite brutal. My view of modern Britain would not be quite as glum as that for I see more rays of sunshine and hope than Mike Carter appears to notice but in the final analysis I am afraid that the author really did cut through a lot of pretence - right to the bone. What he writes is deeply political and I must admit - on the whole true.

Here's a taster:-

Alone again, I looked at the council building where in 1981, the men and women of The People's March were billeted on camp beds overnight. Then I looked across the road for the public toilets. Pete had built them, and every time we drove through West Bromwich when I was a kid he would point them out. "I built that," he would say, and as it slid past the window I would think my dad was as important as Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Thomas Telford or any of the great engineers we were reading about at school.

But the toilets were gone. There was now a giant supermarket there. It should not have been a big surprise. Public toilets have been rapidly disappearing from our high streets, with over 1,700 facilities closing in the last decade, as local authorities have been forced to spend their slashed budgets elsewhere. (Page 227)

It almost goes without saying that when those determined participants in "The People's March" reached Number 10, Downing Street after twenty eight days on the road, Margaret Thatcher refused to meet with them. But she was happy to invite the ousted Chilean dictator General Pinochet round for dinner.

Why?

•  When I pass roadworks why is that there is seldom anybody there working?
• Why is that when I do see workmen at roadworks they are on their smartphones?
• Why do much vaunted celestial night sky events always seem to hide behind clouds?
• Why do I receive up to one hundred new junk e-mails every day?
• Why do the people who send out these annoying junk e-mails  think that it is okay to do that?
• In the south-western sector of Sheffield, why did we have a half hour power cut on Tuesday night?
• When I  used Google to find the reason for that power cut why could I not find an answer?
• Why do my trousers threaten to fall down whenever I am wearing a belt?
• Why does corn pop to make popcorn?
• Why are there know-all trolls in the blogosphere?
• Why does anybody admire or support the English right wing politician Nigel Farage?
• Why is it it so difficult to get the last drop of  tomato ketchup out of a plastic "Heinz" bottle?
• Why do a significant number of Muslim women wear burkhas, niqabs and hijabs?
• Why does anybody read "The Daily Mail"?
• Why are there so many TV programmes that involve celebrities - in quiz programmes, skills contests and "reality" shows?
• Why do so many TV viewers seem to enjoy these celebrity-oriented shows?
• Why do a small number of adults get off on perverted ideas about sex with children and sometimes follow those vile perversions through?
• Why did the state of Tennessee reach the conclusion that  Christa Pike should be given a lethal injection?
• Why didn't that lethal injection work?
• Why do the poor get poorer and the rich get richer?
• Why did The Duke and Duchess of Sussex return to England to set up a new home with their two children?
• Why didn't they stay in California as promised?
• Why do I have so many football programmes?
• Why do many people claim to like ABBA?
• Why do I never run out of "whys"?

With thanks to Bob Slatten at "I Should Be Laughing"

Reddish

Today I booked a rail ticket to the dark side of The Pennines, intending to ramble around some of Manchester's southern suburbs. I boarded the 10.21 at Dore & Totley station only to find that it was packed - standing room only.

Five stops away at Edale, it seemed that half the passengers left the train. It made me wonder if there was some special event happening in Edale but it was more likely that they were just city dwellers out to enjoy the countryside in October sunshine. Anyway, it meant that I could have a seat and read another chapter of my book.

I disembarked at Reddish North which is a couple of miles south of Manchester Piccadilly. I had maps with me so I knew where I was going even though I had never before walked in Reddish, Brinnington, Denton or Bredbury.

Horse conference by Ross Lave Lane

Soon I was in countryside, trudging up Ross Lave Lane to Hyde Hall and the underbelly of Denton. I popped into "The Fletchers Arms" for a latte and a bag of cheese and onion crisps (American: chips). Then down to The River Tame with its long riverside walk known as The Tameside Trail - a lovely green corridor away from traffic. I reached Humes Wood Weir and as I was taking a photograph of the water cascading I spotted a grey heron standing on a nearby rock. He or she may not have noticed me for these distinctive birds are normally very skittish and fly off before you can remove your lens cap.

Not far from there a young Polish man asked if he could help me. He had seen me studying my map. Kindly he directed me to The Peak Forest Canal constructed in the 1790s.

The highlight of that stretch was probably The Woodley Tunnel - 176 yards long and no electrical lighting inside it. Then I climbed a flight of steps hoping they would lead me to street level. But at the top it was a place for floundering with brambly briars and security fences - there was no way through - so back down the steps.

Emerging from Woodley Tunnel

I reached Bredbury Station forty minutes before my train home was due so on Stockport Road, I entered "The Rising Sun" and ordered half a pint of cider.

At first the train home was less than half full but when we reached Edale again  a hundred people got on and three women in their late thirties joined me at my four person table. They had met at The University of Durham twenty years earlier and reunite three or four times a year even though they now live far apart. They were pleasant, kindly and intelligent and it was nice to chat with them.

Garden Tiger Moth mosaic by The Peak Forest Canal

- Made entirely from plastic lids and bottle tops

Silliness

A silly Frenchman

Lewis Carroll knew it and so did Spike Milligan. And a proportion of stand-up comedians know it too. Silliness is a good thing - especially in these beleaguered times when old certainties are being washed away. It's tempting to go around with a furrowed brow, speaking seriously and fretting about current affairs and wailing, "Oh woe is me!"

But a dose of silliness is good for you, like a healing balm. Letting yourself go and being daft like a kitten chasing its tail or a puppy cavorting on a beach. We need to nurture the silly genes inside us and give them airtime.

Jack Haggerty

When I walk Phoebe back to our house  after school, we always pass a gateway where we share a daft idea. I once told her that a big, bad dog lives there so we tiptoe past keeping as quiet as mice. She knows it's just a silly game but she will still  ask questions about that dog.

"What's its name?"

"Satan!"

"Do they keep it on a lead?"

"No. On a very thick chain!"

I think that children are much better about being silly than most adults are. In a sense, child rearing and formal education seem to be partly about squeezing out the silliness - as if being silly was some kind of undesirable condition requiring suppression.

Silliness is connected with light-heartedness, mischief, laughter and loosening up and I'm all for it. It's a vital release valve.

This post was inspired by Debra at "She Who Seeks" (pictured above)

Striding

Stake Hill Road

This morning I needed to get out of the city, be in the countryside, burn off some calories by undertaking a long circular walk. Breathe in some country air and be alone with my thoughts.

Trouble is, during my retirement I have walked everywhere within shouting distance of Sheffield - every geographical square and pretty much every public footpath. So I have to keep going back to places. None of the thrill of virgin territory but at least I get my steps in - thousands of them. I took my camera too.

My sleek Puddingmobile - a gun metal grey Nissan Juke called Butch - transported me to Hollow Meadows on the A57. Then I turned up Rod Hill and deposited Butch in a little pull-in where I have parked several times before. It's safer to leave my metal companion off the narrow road.

With boots on, I set off on the first day of October in glorious sunshine. The temperature was mild. Fluffy white banks of cumulus clouds lolloped in a north easterly direction, further into Yorkshire. I strode along a moorland track called Stake Hill Road where many of the old drystone walls are ill-maintained these days. There's far less sheep farming than there was in times gone by so there's no practical reason for repairing the walls.

Down into the Bradfield Valley where Dale Dyke Reservoir sprawls innocently trying to keep its terrible secret quiet. It was on the night of March 11th 1864 that its dam burst and three million cubic metres of water surged down the valley to Sheffield causing some 240 deaths and  the destruction of 600 homes.

Then along the valley and up towards Sugworth Hall. I took a rest on a wooden stile and closed my eyes in the honeyed sunshine for five minutes before schlepping up to Boot's Folly. By the way, the Yiddish verb "to schlep" does not have to involve carrying anything. It can just describe slow movement - rather like trudging along.

And then Boot's Folly appeared. Sometimes called Boot's Tower, I have blogged about it before. It occupies a prominent position at the head of the valley. In this picture you can see Dale Dyke Reservoir below...

Soon my circle was complete. Back at Butch I ate an orange and an apple and swigged water from my flask as I read a chapter of "All Together Now?" which no doubt I will review when I have finished it. It continues to engage me.

Then back to Sheffield where I was in time to pick Phoebe up from her school playground. The teacher told me she had been involved in some naughtiness at lunchtime with a classmate - barring some new reception children from the Y1 toilets. Naturally we had words as we walked back up the hill to our house.

The last photograph I snapped today was of Bent's Farm on the edge of the moors. Whimsically, I have often thought that if I ever became wildly rich, that is where I would like to live - in glorious peace but only half an hour from Sheffield city centre. No doubt "The Laughing Horse" Blogging Awards Party would take place there every New Year's Eve.

Proposal

Back in the winter of 2014, a vivid dream woke me. It was as if an outline plan for a bestselling novel had arrived in my brain fully formed. I leapt out of bed and ran downstairs then I sat at this very desk  with a notepad and furiously scribbled down the plan before it slipped away as dreams are wont to do. Then I went back to bed and slept till nine.

Later that week I created a formal proposal and posted it off to two well-known publishers that I have chosen not to name in this blogpost.

CHAPTER ONE

Readers are introduced to property developer and reality TV show host Ronald Plump. He is narcissistic and spends several minutes each morning admiring his appearance and preening his thinning hair. He gives himself pep talks, often saying, "You can be anything you want to be Ron!"

CHAPTER TWO

We meet his family - two grown up and rather disappointing sons who live in fear of their father and a younger son called Earl he has had with his third wife a Slovakian model called Urethra. He also has two grown up daughters - one he ignores and the other, somewhat unnaturally, he has the hots for. He cannot help himself. Like his best buddy Jeremy Einstein he is partial to younger women.

CHAPTER THREE

The end of Mr Obama's presidency is in sight and Republicans are keen to put up a guy who can swing the electorate back their way. Some of Ronald's golfing buddies are big within The Republican Party and Ronald is big on TV. His show,  "Dumbasses" attracts millions of viewers each week. The idea is hatched that maybe Ronald will stand.

CHAPTER FOUR

It's early 2016 and Ronald has the Republican ticket. Millions of dollars have been poured into his campaign and his TV promotion campaign is in full swing. Right wing image and campaign advisers have given him plenty of tips - about promising the earth, repeating untruths and slandering his opponents. Ronald quickly reveals that he has no moral reins. His self-belief is immense.

CHAPTER FIVE

Russia is keen to see Ronald elected - believing that this will destabilise western democracies. They invade social media platforms. One of Ronald's campaign team comes up with a slogan that appears on red baseball caps and T-shirts "Make US Great Again". It suggests that somewhere down the track the US had stopped being great. It becomes a rallying point for disaffected working class Americans and racist bigots.

CHAPTER SIX

The election draws ever closer and Ronald denigrates his female Democratic opponent, attacking her with lies and innuendos that startle her because that wasn't how politics was done in America. Rules were being broken and Ronald seems to get away with it. He talks of building a huge wall across the country's entire southern border to keep out unwanted immigrants. It will be decorated with fake gold adornments and what is more American citizens will not have to pay a penny towards its construction.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Following a neck-and-neck race Ronald Plump becomes the US President. At first he cannot believe it. No one can. He stares into the cameras like a deer caught in a car's headlights. Quickly, he has to cobble a cabinet team together. Previously he had not given this a moment's thought. He pulls together a motley bunch of past acquaintances who are totally unsuited for the roles they are given. He decides to colour his skin orange - like an Oompa- Loompa and hires a team of hairdressers to style his hair and add hairpieces and weaves. As this first term proceeds he feels more comfortable in the role.

CHAPTER EIGHT

However, he loses the next presidential election to a time-served Democrat who was once the vice president. Ronald blames most of  the free press and TV media who he labels "fake". He also puts about the idea that somehow the election was rigged and that malpractice had occurred in all the states where he had not won.

CHAPTER NINE

Over the next four years he fires a string of unjustified insults at the new president, gathers even more millions in funding and over in Moscow President Putin does all that he can to ensure victory in the next presidential election. It works and once again Ronald Plump enters The White House but he is better prepared than last time and in the intervening years he has been tutored by right wing advisers about moves he can make  against the transgender community, hardworking immigrants, leading universities, healthcare and previously loyal allies. He makes outrageous claims on foreign territories and persistently distracts ordinary Americans from the thorny subject of  Jeremy Einstein's wrongdoings in which Ronald is deeply implicated.

CHAPTER TEN

With his health failing, Ronald has developed swollen ankles and frequently falls asleep in The Oval Office. His speeches are often deranged but continue to be as boastful as ever. Upon a whim, he begins a war with Iran and fails to give proper support to the people of Ukraine who are embattled by Russian military action. He talks about turning Palestinian Gaza into a holiday resort and claims the idea of climate change is a hoax. He blocks critical news services from The White House and with the help of crypto-currency investors becomes obscenely rich while ordinary American struggle to make ends meet. He has half The White House demolished to make way for an enormous golden ballroom that no other president ever desired.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tragically, Ronald  slips on a bar of soap in his golden shower cubicle in his Florida mansion and cracks his skull on a protruding golden tap. He goes down like a sack of potatoes and just like that Ronald J. Plump is no more. He's kapput, deceased, gone. He cannot be revived. 

⦿

To my eternal disappointment I received two rejection letters. This was one of them...

December 15 2014

Dear Mr Pudding,

Thank you for your novel outline - running title "The Madness of Ronald J. Plump".  Quite frankly, the proposal is fantastical - like something dreamt up on crack cocaine. It could never happen and when it comes to political fiction, general readers need a sense of possibility married with authenticity. It seems that your imagination got the better of you this time round and I am afraid that we could never give air to a book like that. The political landscape you describe simply could not happen in America.

Good luck with any future writing projects in this genre but we advise that you place your notions well inside the fences of political reality. Oh and may I wish you a Happy Christmas!

Yours sincerely,

Miriam Huntington

(Commissioning Editor)