Notes

This is a song and a story from the north east of England - specifically the city of Sunderland and even more specifically The Wearmouth Bridge. It was there in 2018 that an eighteen year old girl called Paige Hunter wrestled with the possibility of killing herself.

At the age of fourteen, she had been raped by a stranger and ever after she lived in mental torment. Standing on that bridge she was coaxed  down by two men in a van. In effect they saved her life.

In the years that have followed, Paige has regularly returned to the  bridge in order to tie tiny notes to the structure - notes that encourage potentially suicidal people to stop and think again.

A local band called The Young 'Uns picked up Paige's story and turned it into a song called "Tiny Notes". This video gives a taste of the song as well as an interview with Paige Hunter. I guess a lot of suicides could be thwarted by kindness - by people reaching out. Very often you don't need to die - there's a way forward for those who live with despair...

Firmament

The Northern Lights

Once in while, British news agencies will announce that something quite exciting is about to happen in the night sky. It might be a shower of meteors, a partial eclipse, an alignment of planets or maybe a glimpse of the northern lights above The North Pole - dancing as though in a discotheque.

Experience has taught me not to get very excited about these astral phenomena. Any time I have ever been out to look, my quest has ended miserably. Maybe it was to do with cloud cover, poor timing or simply failing to look in the correct segment of the night sky. Anyway, success has always eluded me.

Normally, I don't bother any more but on Friday night after Hull City had capitulated to Sheffield United live on Sky Sports, I decided to drive up to the moors beyond Ringinglow. The TV people had half promised that The Northern Lights might be visible in darkness, unpolluted by urban lighting.

So there I was, in blackness,  standing by my faithful car Clint looking towards the northern skies at 22.30 hrs.. There was light out there  but nothing that might resemble the famous natural light show. I tried to take some photographs but it was hopeless as you can see from my surreal picture which quite ironically I have titled "The Northern Lights".

In future, I think I will be best just ignoring any news about the heavens above. Instead, I will simply look up from time to time to see what I can see. I don't need any names or signs, co-ordinates or constellations. After all, the beauty of a clear night sky in velvet darkness is enough on its own. Stars behind stars reaching as far back as we  can imagine. One of the amazing sights that looks upon us as we progress through these very short lives.

Goodness

Good news needs spreading around. There's too much bad news these days. I am sure that several visitors  will have heard this news item from Nashville, Tennessee. It happened on Tuesday evening and it involved the rock star - Jon Bov Jovi.

He and his band were filming on The Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge when they became aware that a woman in a distressed state was standing on the bridge's parapet threatening to jump.

Jon Bon Jovi and his assistant sidled up to the scene and gently set about talking the woman to safety. Fortunately, they succeeded and afterwards the rock star comforted the woman with a warm hug.

I should say that at its highest point the bridge is only sixteen feet tall so it is very likely that the woman would not have been killed it she had jumped. Her mind must have been in a terrible state of confusion. In fact, looking at her blue outfit, I wonder if she had recently been under medical supervision.

My impression is that Jon Bon Jovi is one of the good guys. He has done various other kind and charitable things in his life as a rock star - including improving housing projects, supporting veterans, funding soup kitchens for the needy and raising money for disaster relief in Haiti.

Good lad Jon! You didn't walk on by.

Margot

 

Our lovely Margot at ten months old, heading towards her first birthday in November. Yesterday afternoon, I snapped her picture as she was getting ready to leave. You can't see this but just off camera in the first picture her mama has arrived after  eight hours of home work in her little office. And here's Margot below - presumably saying, "Your Country Needs You!" just like Lord Kitchener.

The sharp-eyed amongst you might recall that Phoebe - now aged 3 years 8 months - wore that very same faux-fur coat when she was a babe. This photo was taken when she was nine months old and on holiday in Canada...

Time keeps rolling on. This time next year Phoebe will be in primary school - the same one that her parents both attended. Margot will be walking and talking. And of course, perhaps less obviously, we are growing older too, day by day, month by month on the merry journey to old age and all that that entails...

Margot, Margot, Margot...

Life's just a passing show

You stand here in the light

Then wave and say good night.

Turnip

"Are there any questions?" That is a question that is often put to politicians after they have finished a speech or presentation. Well I have got twenty questions for the fellow I call The Orange Turnip. You know who I mean...

1. Who ties your neckties?
2. Have you got a Vietnam Veterans Service tie?
3. How are your bone spurs nowadays and do they still give you gyp?
4. What is the least populous state in the USA? (ie. "populous" refers to the number of people who live in the state)
5. Which do you prefer - a Big Mac or a Burger King "Whopper"? Why?
6. In which European country was your wife Melania born?
7. What was the title of the last novel you read?
8. On which Scottish island was your mother born and raised?
9. Who do you think was the better president and why - yourself or James Buchanan (1857-1861)?
10. Why do you think Mrs Harris clearly won Tuesday night's TV debate?
11. How on earth  did you achieve a Bachelor of Science degree from The University of Pennsylvania in 1968?
12. Which brand of make-up or concealer do you use to make your face that distinctive orange colour?
13. Why do often insert President Obama's middle name "Hussain" when you mention him at one of your rambling rallies?
14. After so many years of trying, why do you think are you still such a poor golfer?
15. What is the capital of Canada?
16. Why do you think your hands are so small - could it be genetic?
17. Why did you encourage the assault on The US Capitol on January 6th 2021?
18. What do you feel about being a convicted felon?
19. Have you ever been to "Fido's" - the pet restaurant in Springfield, Ohio?
20. How does it feel to be the oldest man who has ever stood for the office of President of the United States of America?

Have you got any other tricky questions you would like to put to The Orange Turnip?

Reblog

Sylvie

I first posted this story in October 2012 though the events 

covered within it actually  happened between 1972 and 1974.

In the early summer of 1972, I had to spend a week at Southlands College in Wimbledon, London - learning how to teach before jetting off to be a V.S.O. volunteer teacher in the Fiji Islands. At Southlands, we had small classes of international guinea pig students upon whom we could test out our little lesson plans. One of these students was a young French woman called Sylvie from Paris. On a couple of evenings, she was in the college group that descended on a local pub to drink and chat. She asked if she could write to me while I was away and I agreed. She could be my French penfriend.

I hadn't touched her, kissed her or shown any love interest. She was just a French girl who wanted to write to me. As far as I was concerned, that was all. Besides, I already had a girlfriend back in Yorkshire. After a couple of months in my island paradise, an aerogramme letter arrived from France. It was from Sylvie. She was asking me how I was doing and I replied - all very polite and matter-of-fact. In the manner of penfriends - that's all.

A couple of months after that, she wrote back. Again the communication was just about the factual details of her life in France so again I told her about Fiji - the wild pigs and snorkelling out beyond the reef and the traditional dancing and drinking muddy "grog" with the old guys from my village.

In late August 1973, I returned from Fiji. This was in an era when young people didn't travel abroad as they do now. My experience was quite novel. My parents met me at Heathrow Airport and we travelled back to the heartland - my beloved Yorkshire.

Two days later, there was a knocking at our door. My father told me that there were two French girls outside and they had come to see me. It was Sylvie and her friend, Chantelle. I was flabbergasted. They had reserved a room in our village's "New Inn". That evening, Sylvie told me she loved me. I was horrified. "But I don't love you!" and "What are you doing here?" and "The letters meant nothing - just chitchat!" were just a few of the remarks I made.

The two girls hung about in my East Yorkshire village. Then a few days later my father drove me up to Scotland where I was to begin my university studies in Stirling. Two days after that - guess what - Sylvie arrived in Scotland! For two weeks, she stalked me. By now I was almost yelling at her. "Get lost! I am just not interested in you! Please go away!" I recall a particular lecture - "An Introduction to Shakespeare". I was scribbling down notes in my A4 pad while behind me sat Sylvie, staring at me for the full hour like a puppy dog waiting for its master to offer her a biscuit. "GO AWAY!"

Finally, I thought I had got her to understand. There were tears of realisation and she agreed to return to Paris. "Just one kiss! Please!" she pleaded but I wouldn't even give her that. "No, I don't want you Sylvie! Just leave! You'll find somebody else who really wants you but that isn't me!"

The relief I experienced after she had gone was palpable. No longer would I find her sitting cross-legged outside the door of my hall of residence study bedroom. No longer would she be hovering around as I tried to converse with new acquaintances, no longer would I have to suffer this weird French stalker.

A month later she was back. And more insistent than before. She got into the kitchen area at the end of my corridor and made me meals - including prime rump steaks seasoned with salt and pepper and parsley. The way to a man's heart may truly be through his stomach but it was with reluctance that I sank my gnashers into that lovely meat. She brought me a copy of "Germinal" by Emile Zola with a hessian cover that she had embroidered herself. She was there. There all the time and there was nothing I could do to drive her away.

One night I had been at "The Allengrange" - the student pub, getting sloshed and when I got back to my room at two in the morning - who should be there again but Sylvie. She barged her way in and proceeded to undress. "I want you! I'm going to sleep with you! I love you!" she announced.

I guess I just flipped. I had had more than enough of all this and I was as drunk as a Tory MP after an equestrian event. She was stark naked when I forcibly bundled her back out into the corridor - throwing her clothes after her. Almost hysterically, I yelled at her that I hated her and wished I had never met her. I slammed and locked my door, trying to ignore her wailing and hammering and the next morning she was, miraculously, gone!

But not gone! She came back again the following April when I was at a low ebb and I felt like an animal that had become tired of the chase so finally I gave in and for a couple of weeks we played the parts of lovers but it was mechanical and meaningless and I think she finally realised that I could never love her with my heart. It just wasn't in me. So finally, finally, Sylvie went away for good and I never saw or heard from her again.

There are several other things I could say about Sylvie but in this brief account I think I have given you the gist of what occurred. Even today there are times when I wonder if she will come knocking again or when the phone rings and there's an empty void she will announce herself and I won't be listening to  another voice from an Indian call centre after all.

Looking back, Sylvie spoilt my early days at university when I should

have just been settling in , making new friends, finding my feet. You 

hear about stalkers - mostly women are the victims but Sylvie proved

that men may also be targeted. It was all a kind of madness. I have 

no idea where her life went from then on. The top picture was

 AI generated as I have no photos of her.

Artists

Less than a mile from this keyboard you will find Sheffield's Botanical Gardens - a lovely and long established urban space that is normally free for the public to enter and enjoy. However, one weekend a year the gardens are taken over for an art-themed event called "Art in the Gardens". You have to pay an entrance fee.

The glass house is filled with art and there are marquees and side stalls, food concessions etcetera. Shirley and I spent ninety minutes there on Saturday morning before she went to the Age Concern charity shop where she sometimes puts in a shift.

Maybe I missed some things but I was pleased to admire the art of two professional participants and to get to talk with them. 

Roger Allen is chiefly a watercolourist based in The Peak District. Outside the tent where he was exhibiting, he had placed one of his finest pictures on an easel. It evidenced great patience and attention to detail and I found it stunningly beautiful in its green ordinariness. Called "Fin Cop", it focuses on a particular hill that overlooks The River Wye north of Bakewell. I am not at all sure that the image shared below does that exceptional  painting justice...

Here's Roger at work on a different painting...

The second artist I met was  Greta Vilidaite who gave up her academic career as a neuroscientist to concentrate on her painting - mostly in oils. Like Roger Allen, she often focuses on The Peak District and just last month one of her pictures was featured on the cover of a lifestyle magazine called "Grapevine" that is delivered free to homes throughout South West Sheffield

Titled "Quiet Under Red Skies", this is the painting I am talking about...

Greta is a walker and rock climber and like me she knows The Peak District National Park very well, finding plenty of inspiration there. The painting shown above was still available for purchase on Saturday at only £450 (US$590).

Here's Greta working "en plein air" on a different painting...

I look at admirable people like Roger Allen and Greta Vilidaite and know that I could be like them if only I had the discipline and the application to keep working on my art week in and week out - developing my innate talent. But to be honest and it's probably the same with writing, I have frittered away far too much time instead of getting stuck in and actually doing it. Good luck to them!

Quiztime

Another "Quiztime" quiz from Yorkshire Pudding Entertainment Inc.. This week's theme is songs but not recent songs. How will you do? Answers given in the Comments section. Good luck! 

⦿

1. Which Oklahoma city was Gene Pitney twenty four hours from?

2. Which Georgia-born singer was "sitting on the dock of the bay"?

3. Which Liverpool lane did The Beatles sing about in a 1967 hit single?

4. Which fashion and lifestyle magazine did Madonna sing about in a 1990 hit single?

5. Which song from the musical "Hair" contains these words - "He resembles George Harrison of The Beatles/ But he wears his hair tied in a small bow at the back"?

6. She sang, 

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her and I go back to

I go back to us

but who was this troubled British singer?

(a) Cilla Black  (b) Petula Clark  (c) Amy Winehouse (d) Florence Welch

7.  Which 1969 Bob Dylan hit single includes these words - "I long to see you in the morning light./ I long to reach for you in the night"?

8. This cartoon band had a big hit with "Sugar, Sugar" in 1969 but who were they?

(a) The Temptations (b)The Archies (c) The Monkees  (d)The Republicans

9. 

I recall the yellow cotton dress

Foaming like a wave

On the ground beneath your knees

The birds, like tender babies in your hands

And the old men playing Chinese checkers by the trees

Which Los Angeles Park was Richard Harris singing  about in this 1969 hit single composed by Jimmy Webb?

10.

I sat on the roof

And kicked off the moss

Well, a few of the verses

Well, they've got me quite cross

But the sun's been quite kind

While I wrote this song

It's for people like you that keep it turned on

It was his very first hit single back in 1970 but who was he? Clue: His real name is Reginald  Kenneth Dwight.

Okay that's it! Score and perhaps why?

Frankly

I met a boy called Frank Mills

On September twelfth right here

In front of the Waverly

But unfortunately, I lost his address.

He was last seen with his friend, a drummer

He resembles George Harrison of The Beatles

But he wears his hair tied in a small bow at the back

I love him but it embarrasses me

To walk down the street with him

He lives in Brooklyn somewhere

And he wears his white crash helmet

He has golden chains on his leather jacket

And on the back are written the names

"Mary" and "Mom" and "Hell's Angels"

I would gratefully appreciate if you see him tell him

I'm in the park with my girlfriend and please

Tell him Angela and I don't want the two dollars back, just him.

⦿

Do you know the song? Until this very morning, I had no idea that if features in the musical "Hair" which I have never seen. "Frank Mills" has been recorded by various artists over the years including Barbra Streisand, Sandie Shaw and The Lemonheads but it was this version that arrested me  at the end of the sixties - by the Dutch singer  Raina Gerardina Bojoura van Melzen or Bojoura for short. Later she would marry Hans Cleuver, drummer in the Dutch band Focus.

The song has an unusual kind of intimacy, with small but affectionate details. The standpoint of the singer is one of starry-eyed innocence. Who was this guy - Frank Mills who went off with the two dollars he had presumably cadged off her and her friend Angela? Was he a real Hell's Angel or just a rebellious kid? By the way, today "The Waverly Inn" is a high end Manhattan restaurant.

The song's music was written by Galt MacDermot with lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado. It has been here in my head since 1969. I never did flush it out and finally it has secured its place within this humble Yorkshire blog. Dear Bojoura, if I do cross paths with Frank Mills, I will indeed tell him that you do not want the two dollars back, just him.

Jobs

Tasker Dunham over at "A Yorkshire Memoir" has just been merrily blogging away about part time jobs that people did when still in full-time education.

Living in a village situated in the middle of productive farmland, there was always money to be made at harvest-time. I mostly recall potato picking and also pea picking. Even for a ten or eleven year old boy, such work was back-breaking. You really knew about it when you had spent six or seven hours stooping in a field and in addition the filled wire baskets were a struggle to lug back to the trailer.

I had an evening paper round between  the ages of twelve and fourteen. There were around forty copies of "The Hull Daily Mail" to be delivered every night. In those days almost every other house in the village subscribed to that paper. My friend, Paul Budd, delivered weekly and monthly magazines. I recall that a man who lived in a  bungalow on the edge of the village subscribed to "Playboy" but for several months he never got it on time. I am sure you can guess why. 

I must have been fifteen when I began working at the turkey farm near Brandesburton. It involved weekends and some holiday work. It wasn't a proper "farm" as portrayed in children's story books, it was more of a concentration camp. There were several sheds populated by thousands of gobbling white turkeys at different stages of development. The job was mostly about feeding and watering them and ensuring that the shed floors were reasonably clean. Fresh wood shavings had to be manually scattered  every two or three days. As they grew older the turkeys became noisier - quarreling over food and the imminent approach of workers like me.

When I was sixteen, after I had finished my O level exams, I got a job at a caravan camp just south of Scarborough. It was called The Crow's Nest - formerly just a farm - and it was run by the Palmer family who, I believe, still run it today. I was provided with a small caravan to lodge in and I had various duties to perform - mostly related to the farming side of the business. There were eggs to collect from the battery sheds where in three tiers, hens shared hundreds of cages from which wires ran into troughs out of  which you collected the eggs  twice a day. There were also wax milk cartons to fill and seal in the dairy every afternoon.

During the Christmas holiday of 1970-71,  I was the stand-in caretaker at the village school. The regular caretaker, Maurice, was hospitalised I believe. I had to clean every floor in the school - mostly using a heavy floor-cleaning machine that scrubbed and then buffed the floors. It was difficult and tiresome work but financially beneficial so I didn't mind too much.

From sixteen to eighteen I was the lead singer of a semi-professional rock and roll band and though I did it for the love of it, we occasionally received pay packets. I guess that in the time I was with them we played fifty or sixty paid gigs. We called ourselves Village and I still have the pewter tankard that the band's manager presented to me  a month or so before I left them to follow a different dream - teaching in The Fiji Islands under the auspices of Voluntary Service Overseas.

I could go on to write about work I  undertook during the time I was a university student (1973-77) but I think I will leave that for another time.

Poem

Forever In Our Hearts

It is said that from the roof
You could see to Windsor.

It is further said that eighteen 

Of the victims were children -

Killed by incompetence

And greed and passing the buck

Just to improve the structure's look.

Oh sing me a song of Grenfell Tower

And  flames that roared in that witching hour

A song of seventy two goodbyes,

Tears, excuses and heinous lies.

We hear the anguish of their cries

Forever in our hearts.

⦿

In memory of the seventy two residents of Grenfell Tower, West London 

who lost their lives in the early hours of June 14th, 2017. Seven years after

the terrible event, the official inquiry report has just come out. Of course you 

can never get the deceased back but you can give them the posthumous

justice they deserve. Now the families must wait yet more years for

that to happen. The story is not yet over. Not by a long way.

Travellers

Something unusual happened on yesterday's walk as Tony and I plodded across Carr Bridge Playing Fields. We had already spotted a small group of caravans (American: trailers), some with associated cars and we had both speculated that they might belong to travellers or gypsies. They were parked up near the shuttered pavilion.

One of the caravans caught my eye and I photographed it from fifty yards away with a mature weeping willow tree and terraced houses behind it. There were no people in the shot and besides taking that picture was entirely legal. Ironically, the travellers' encampment on a public  recreation ground was wholly illegal.

Just then I heard a voice from the children's playground and a woman started to walk towards me. I guessed she was protesting about me taking the photograph.

Turns out she was not a woman after all but a teenage girl of around fifteen and she approached with an assorted gang of small children mostly aged between four and ten.

The girl challenged me about my camera work and rather than getting on my high horse and putting her in her place, I decided to play it cool. After all, there might well have been gypsy parents in the caravans and before you knew it I could have been in the middle of an unsavoury scene.

Our voices were not raised and I had no problem with deleting the picture I had just taken.  All the children had unwashed, freckled faces. The smaller kids touched my pockets and appeared very interested in my watch. The lead girl was wearing shorts and a "Barbie" T-shirt with the name "Barbie" repeated in red and white.

After the situation had been diffused, I had a ten minute conversation with Rose and her twelve year old sidekick - Anna. The small urchin-like children had drifted back to the playground area. Both girls spoke in  Irish accents though it is very possible that they have never set foot on the island of Ireland.

ROSE: We've got lots of enemies you know. We have to be careful.
ME: Oh I know that. It's a bit like black and Asian people. They meet lots of prejudice.
ROSE: We get blamed for everything. Any time something is stolen, travellers get the blame.
ANNA: It's not fair.
ME: I understand where you are coming from. Being a member of the travelling community cannot be easy.
ROSE: You are right there. We have got lots of enemies.

Travellers refer to those who dwell in settled host communities as "gorjas"  or "gorgers" for we are not a part of Romany culture. Over centuries there has been regular tension and sometimes conflict between gorjas and travellers.

When I was a boy, I remember a gypsy troop travelling through our village twice a year with horse-pulled wooden caravans. Nowadays, the descendants of those traditional picture book gypsies have modern caravans and nice vehicles to pull them. Superficially, things may have changed but fundamentally travelling communities stay the same.

I would guess that Rose and Anna have rarely if ever had a pleasant conversation with a gorja man. After all, they are probably told from an early age that you should never trust a gorja...

ANNA: Are you famous?
ME: (laughing) No. I am not famous. Are you famous?
ANNA: I'll never be famous.
ME: But I see that you are famous. You have got your name all over yout T-shirt. Barbie!
ROSE: I'm not Barbie! My name is Rose.
ME: But it says Barbie! Where's Ken? 
ROSE: (laughing) I'm still waiting for Ken to come along.
ME: And you must be Chelsea! Isn't she Barbie's best friend?
ANNA: No. She's her sister. My name is Anna.

And that's how the meeting continued. A possible confrontation had turned to pleasant banter in the middle of a sports field. I shook hands with both of the girls and Rose apologised for challenging me about the photograph.

I said, "No don't apologise Rose! You challenged me in a polite manner and I think you were quite brave to do that. You didn't shout or swear and I appreciate that. You are a good person, a nice person and I wish you all the very best. I can understand where you were coming from with your challenge. There are some right weirdos around. You have to be careful."

Irish Travellers  ©Joseph-Philippe Bevillard

Miami?

Does it say "Miami"? I think it does. It is the name of a house in the village of East Hardwick, West Yorkshire. I imagine that long ago the couple who reside at No.43 enjoyed a holiday in Miami. It was so good that they borrowed the Floridian city's name for their abode.

Tony and I met up as arranged at ten thirty this morning in the village of High Ackworth, two miles west of East Hardwick. We parked close to the village church which is named after St Cuthbert. Above the door there is a weathered statue of St Cuthbert whose mortal remains, according to folklore, rested in the church one night long ago following the Danish and Viking  invasions that came after the Roman occupation of Britain.

Here is that weathered statue of St Cuthbert, venerated abbot of the monastery on Lindisfarne whose final resting place is inside the magnificent Norman  cathedral at Durham. In my opinion he, not St George, should be Britain's patron saint...

Anyway, Tony and I were mainly in that district to undertake a ten mile country walk. South of East Hardwick we stopped to pick these juicy brambles. They were sweet and - to use one of Mary Moon's words - succulent...

Just ahead, trumpeting bindweed or convolvulus arvensis sang from overgrown verges beneath hawthorn hedgerows to mark the imminent end of summer...

At Low Farm, south of Low Ackworth, this young cow did not low or even moo. Her name is Taylor Swift or did I just make that up? Perhaps.

Also at Low Ackworth, as we were crossing the recreation ground we spotted this intetesting ivy-clothed house peeping over the boundary hedge. I don't know what it's called - maybe Scarborough or Lanzarote.

Squeezed  between the houses at Ackworth Moor Top, I spotted this tiny Chinese takeaway - "The Lotus Garden". It occupied a very unlikely position...

After the walk, Tony and I enjoyed  refreshing drinks in "The Brown Cow" before heading back to our respective homes. Having been rather unwell this past month, it was by far the longest circuit I have undertaken in weeks. 

Understandably, I was drained of energy when I walked into our house and after our evening meal of moussaka and salad, I slept on the sofa for almost an hour. I might call our house Miami too. That will impress the postman.

Transom

Above our front door and not at all unusually is a beam known as a transom. In fact it is part of the door frame. Above that beam is a small sealed window that through history has become known as a fanlight, transom window or simply a transom like the beam below it.

A few years ago, we had a new door fitted and at the time we decided that the glass of our transom should have the house number in it - created via computer assisted sand blasting. This left the number itself defined in clear glass while the surrounding glass  remains evenly opaque.

Such numbers have become quite common in Great Britain in recent years, helping drive-by delivery personnel to better locate houses as they do their rounds. I think it is also a nice design touch and not all that expensive to achieve.

When the window was installed I had no idea that I might be endlessly fascinated by the sunlit image of our house number finding slightly different positions each sunny morning and throughout the year. Of course on cloudy mornings it does not appear.

Sometimes the number curls over steps on our carpeted staircase . Sometimes it's in the kitchen and sometimes, as in the image above, it is sliding over the panelling in our hallway. I have also seen it in bright moonlight.

It's like our very own slow-moving light show. I snapped the image at the top just last week. A little bit of magic that one could so easily overlook.

Dolly

Dolly Parton is a megastar. We all know the story of her very humble beginnings in a one room cabin in the mountains of Tennessee. With her singing voice and her engaging personality, she forged  a successful career for herself in the entertainment industry. 

She could have spent her millions entirely on herself and immediate family but that is not who Dolly is. She remembers where she came from and  has a strong urge to help others. Back in 2020 she made a personal donation of $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support the development of the Moderna vaccine in the battle against COVID 19.

But what mostly impresses me about Dolly Parton is the mission she took upon herself in the 1980s to do something very positive to tackle illiteracy. Her Imagination Library organisation has  given out well over 200 million free books to thousands of targeted children - not just in The United States but in several other countries too. Sheffield's neighbouring steel town - Rotherham continues to be one of the recipient communities.

Dolly could never have children of her own owing to her endometriosis and the partial hysterectomy she had at the age of thirty six but she has tried to ensure that many other people's children get off to a good start in life. She recognises the vital significance of reading and writing and how being literate can so often be the key to a fulfilling and happy life.

Over decades, The Imagination Library has worked its magic across the state of Kentucky and last week Dolly Parton received that state's highest public service  award. She became a Kentucky Colonel and that made me smile. God bless Dolly!