Northern

Another night, another song. Yesterday I was moved by Michael's posting of a video that showed  a choir singing  their strangely uplifting version of "Life in a Northern Town" by The Dream Academy. It made number 7 on the US Billboard chart back in 1986 and number 15 in Great Britain.

It is a strangely haunting number but the lyrics seem peculiarly throwaway and carelessly crafted - yet that does not appear to matter. The song did its job and now, many years later  - the members of The Dream Academy -  Nick Laird-Clowes, Kate St John, and Gilbert Gabriel are all in their late sixties but still making music.

I give you "Life in a Northern Town" with lyrics:-

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I must apologise for another absence. Shirley and I are heading for the North Yorkshire market town of Malton on Monday morning. We will be staying in "The Talbot" hotel (see top picture) . I have paid for this two night stay with a gift voucher that my two children generously  presented to me in 2023 to mark my seventieth birthday.

Malton holds a special place in my heart because it is where my father was born and raised and it is where my paternal grandparents are both buried - though strangely, I have never slept there before. So it will be a break but also a little bit of a pilgrimage too.

I will be back at this keyboard on Wednesday night. Adios! or as we say in in Yorkshire, "See thi!"

Hammer

We have all heard the song, "If I Had A Hammer". It is a protest song and it was written in 1949 by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays of the folk group, The Weavers. It ruffled the American establishment somewhat for initially it was performed to raise funds for victimised members of The Communist Party of the United States.

The simple song did not disappear. It endured and in 1963, Peter Paul and Mary performed it at the end of the famous People's March on Washington before Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech. Here they are...

The song has been widely performed and recorded - even making its way into churches and school assemblies. It can be sung jauntily or sweetly but I prefer to hear it when it has been injected with a healthy dose of righteous anger when the singer fully realises just what this iconic song proposes. In the final analysis, it is a war cry...

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning

I'd hammer in the evening all over this land

I'd hammer out danger, I'd hammer out a warning

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land, ooh

If I had a bell, I'd ring it in the morning

I'd ring it in the evening all over this land

I'd ring out danger, I'd ring out a warning

I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land, ooh

If I had a song, I'd sing it in the morning

I'd sing it in the evening all over this land

I'd sing out danger, I'd sing out a warning

I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land, ooh

Well, I got a hammer, and I got a bell

I've got a song to sing all over this land

It's the hammer of justice, it's the bell of freedom

It's a song about love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land

It's the hammer of justice

It's the bell of freedom

It's a song about love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land

Peace

Mr Tumble - British Children's TV star

In the event, Putin was not rugby tackled on the red carpet before being clapped in irons and whisked off to Guantanamo Bay. On the contrary, Trump applauded the mass murderer, warmly shook hands with him and offered him a ride in the presidential limo known as The Beast. Even as I write this, the two "great leaders" are involved in talks about Ukraine that go something like this... "If you slap my back, I will slap yours".

Much more important than all of that, we have got Phoebe here tonight - having another sleep-over. It took quite a bit of patient diplomacy to get her to settle down for the night but at least we did not have to go to Alaska. There was "Paw Patrol",  three boxed games, a warm bath and stories from both Grandma and Grandpa before she drifted off to slumberland.

Earlier, on this very computer chair I had Margot on one knee and Phoebe on the other as we watched Mr Tumble's versions of a dozen nursery rhymes. The wheels on the bus went round and round ad infinitum and The Grand Old Duke of York's men were surely sick of being marched up and down that goddamn hill. But I was in heaven - a bona fide grandpa with a granddaughter on each knee. Can life be better than that?

Earlier still, I was trimming a long hedge and on the other side pruning our rampant holly bushes. Plenty of garden waste to deal with - now sitting in two big builders' bags awaiting transport to the so-called recycling centre run by the city council over at Gleadless. We used to call it the tip. You have to time your visits there carefully to avoid long queues. They open at 9.30am on Saturday but I might leave it till Monday morning.

Over in Alaska, the legend "Pursuing Peace" is written on the wall behind the two lecterns where Vladimir Trump and Donald Putin are about to speak after three hours of talks.  It's like the title of a poem. If you pursue it, will it co-operate and where might you find it? Crouching in undergrowth like a fox or evaporating into the summer air? Belligerent, spiteful, felonious and self-obsessed Trump  turned into Trump The Peacemaker - like Ozzy Osbourne becoming an opera singer.

Meanwhile, Putin appears to talk in the voice of a skilled female interpreter. It suits him fine. Still, he has not been arrested and frogmarched the hell out of there.

"Next time in Moscow," smirks the tyrant.

Snare!

The whole world knows that Trump is about to meet Putin for discussions about the war in Ukraine. Previously, Trump has shown breathtaking  naivete about this conflict - even cornering and berating President Zelensky in The White House - as if he was somehow culpable.

Trump has surrounded himself with shallow and inexperienced right wing sycophants, throwing out intelligent time-served strategists who understand how diplomacy works. Trump himself may know a thing or two about making deals in relation to real estate and construction but such experience is hardly applicable in the serious business of effectively ending conflicts between nations.

Many think that the meeting in Alaska should not be happening because not only will President Zelensky be excluded but Trump appears to have done very little to gen up on Ukraine's recent history. He's a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, relying on his "very stable genius" to push on through. The simple fact that Putin was the aggressor, the invader and the occupier of vast swathes of Ukrainian territory does not appear to have registered in Trump's "high IQ" brain.

Before writing this blogpost, I tried to find out out how many people had been killed in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. How many Russian and Ukrainian citizens, how many Ukrainian fighters and Russian soldiers. Unfortunately, reliable answers were elusive but there is no doubt that thousands have died and thousands more have been wounded. Many thousands of Ukrainians have fled their country - seeking sanctuary elsewhere.

And who is to blame for all this misery? Who is really culpable?  The answer is Vladimir Putin of course. There may be no blood on his smart suits and waxy complexion as he struts around vast marbled rooms far from the front line but it is him all right. He is to blame.

And so we come to my main proposition that Putin should be snared and arrested in Alaska. He is a warmonger and mass murderer. How can it be right that he should visit Alaska for diplomatic talks without facing the consequences of his brutality? Arrest him I say! 

Would we have entertained Hitler for chummy peace talks in 1944 when World War II was still raging and concentration camps were in full operation? No! So bundle Putin in a police vehicle and stick  him in an orange jump suit with manacles on his ankles and wrists and send him to Guantanamo Bay to eat lizards. That's how to end the war in Ukraine.

Quiztime

 

It is symptomatic of patriarchal societies  that far more men make names for themselves than women do. Historically, the vast majority of women have shunned the limelight, often beavering away in the background and of course, rather than pursuing fame, a lot of them focus on their families and homes.  That being said, thousands of women have found fame and this quiz gives you ten of them but who are they? With each picture there's  a helpful clue. Answers given in Comments.

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1. Her real name is Stefani Germanotta

2. British sculptress who died in  1975

(a) Barbara Bach (b) Barbara Bush

(c) Barbara Elvecrog (d) Barbara Hepworth

3. 40th prime minister of New Zealand

4. American writer and civil rights activist

who died in 2014

5. Exceptional German tennis player

6. Assassinated in New Delhi in 1984

7. First woman in space

(a) Natasha Rostova (b) Sally Ride  

(c) Valentina Tereshkova (d) Helen Sharman

8. French politician still operating.

9. Imprisoned Burmese politician

(a) Aung San Suu Kyi (b) Kyi Suu San Aung
(c) Sue San Suu (d) Cordelia McDonald

  10. Australian film actress

That's it folks! How did you do?

Wisdom

Charles Dow

What is wisdom and who possesses it? Can wisdom be acquired? For example, can you take courses aimed at making attendees wise? When I was at university in the seventies, I am sure that courses in wisdom were not available.

I have several other thoughts about wisdom. For example, are wise people those who stand by and judge from the sidelines rather than people who get involved in the hurly burly of life? I would also ask - if you are in possession of wisdom do you have to  be wise all the time or can you sometimes take your wise hat off and be playful or silly? Is wisdom always connected with seriousness?

Do those who possess wisdom habitually weigh up  the things they do before they do them? Do wise people reflect intelligently upon current affairs and the activities of their friends and families?

Do wise people avoid unhealthy foods and alcoholic beverages? Do they play word games on their smartphones? Do they even have smartphones? Are wise people ultra-careful with money - investing it in sensible places and do wise people support charities?

When you are wise, I guess that sometimes you will bristle when you encounter stupidity or foolishness. However, is that bristling a wise reaction? Wouldn't it be better to smile sagely, unruffled by daftness and walk away?

Do you need to be old to be wise or can younger people also possess wisdom? Is wisdom something that can only really be gained through experience of life? Or are you somehow genetically blessed with wisdom?

Dowism is an anagram of wisdom but who the hell was Dow? Perhaps Charles Dow - shown at the top - who died in 1902 and was the founder of Dow Jones. He was also the co-founder of "The Wall Street Journal".  Maybe he was wise or maybe he wasn't. Was it wise to have so much facial hair that he could not locate his mouth?

This blogpost probably confirms what some of  you already knew - that I am just a wise guy!

Magic

Up our garden we have an ancient hydrangea bush that in most summers is heavy with large blue blossoms. This year there appear to be no blossoms emerging and I think that that is because of how harshly I pruned the plant back in February. However, it remains a healthy and well-established shrub and I have little doubt that next year it will come again. It won't do it any harm to have a rest year.

Doing a little googling about hydrangeas, I realise that I ought to fertilise ours some time because it has been neglected in that regard for years. Previously, I have just let Nature do its job without extra nutrients. You can buy special fertiliser for hydrangeas - to bring out the best in them. I must remember to buy some next time I visit our B&Q superstore.

Above is the common reason why plants like hydrangeas might wilt. Simply - not enough turgor pressure. The plant's cells are deflated but they can soon be re-inflated through watering - bringing rigidity back to the entire structure.

I gave our hydrangea a good watering after spotting its sagging condition this morning - as shown in the top picture. I believe I gave it eight bucketfuls. By this evening, the plant had really perked up. Its turgor pressure greatly lifted but there is a sense in which what had happened was quite simply magic!

Summer

Sweet Victoria plums in our garden

It is not over yet but this has been one of the loveliest English summers that I can remember. So many warm, sunny days. Swallows on the wing and ripening brambles in the hedgerows. There's a hosepipe ban and reservoirs are depleting but I am not complaining. This lovely summer has gone on and on. Currently, we are on the brink of our fourth official heatwave since the start of May.

Yesterday, Shirley's extended family converged on the North Lincolnshire village of Amcotts where her Auntie Marion lives. She had created the most wonderful and wholesome buffet with home-cured ham, tender beef, fresh salad, homemade quiches, lasagne made from scratch, rice and pasta and beautiful homemade desserts including cheesecakes, fruit salad, strawberries and Bakewell tart. All so delicious.

As I said to Auntie Marion before we left... "If only all buffet meals were as special as this one." Once again she had done a sterling job of it all.

We ate and drank outside and I chased Phoebe and her half cousin Winnie under the big two hundred year old  copper beech tree. Then they sat upon me - The Grandpa Bench and we laughed as though there would be no tomorrow.

Gunness Wharf by The River Trent near Amcotts

Back home plums hang upon our little Victoria plum tree in rude bunches - so sweet and bounteous as butterflies dance upon the breeze and black and yellow wasps threaten unwanted inoculations.

On Friday evening, I walked up The Limb Valley - through the trees and out into the sunshine before schlepping up to "The Norfolk Arms" at Ringinglow. There I enjoyed a pint of "Stones" before the fifty minute walk home - all the way down Ringinglow Road and then left at Dobbin Hill. At least it was all downhill so I didn't need to rest once. Just kept walking. All the way down.

And this is The Summer of 25.... so gorgeous that some might not register it till it is consigned to history and memory. Such a beautiful summer. If only they were all like this one.

White horses at the head of The Limb Valley, Sheffield

Tenant

In Berkshire, I sat out in the peaceful garden of our rental house and read the second half of "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Brontë . Can you see the garden furniture where I sat, turning the pages well into the summer dusk? Once I even fell asleep out there for perhaps half an hour and woke up in semi-darkness. The temperature was as balmy as it is meant to be on summer evenings and I felt relaxed - my mind emptied of the usual mental interference and wholly focused on Anne Brontë  's writing.

The novel was published in 1848. The "tenant" in the title is a young widow who has sought sanctuary in a place where she is not known. An air of mystery surrounds her and local people gossip about her, putting two and two together and making five. An eligible local young man called Gilbert Markham is greatly attracted to her but she spurns all of his advances.

It turns out that she had married a wrong 'un - a caddish upper class drunkard who was hell bent on pleasure  and treated his wife as a doormat. He even spoke insultingly of the young son they had conceived together.

I haven't given too much of the story away in case you ever choose to read this novel too. 

I found the early Victorian language quite easy to follow - so different from when I read my first Victorian novels when I was a teenager. Back then I stumbled along but with this novel I simply motored. It was easy - perhaps testament to my career in education and a lifetime of reading.

Here's a little sample:-

“Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone. First study; then approve; then love. Let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light discourse. - These are nothing - and worse than nothing - snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction. Principle is the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the handsomest, and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool.”

Yes - I know - not every reader's cup of tea but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and of course, like Dave in southern Ireland, I have always been a sucker for the Brontës. By the way, Anne Brontë died just a year after "The Tenant of Wilodfell Hall" was published. She was twenty nine years old. She also left poetry and another novel - "Agnes Gray" which I have never read but which is now most definitely on my list.

War?

Getty Images

What is happening in Gaza? They keep referring to it as a "war" but as far as I can see, it is not a war at all. It is an obliteration, a persecution, a mass humiliation, a payback like never before - but not a "war". The term "war" suggests two enemies battling for supremacy and ultimate victory but in Gaza the current brutal episode all appears very much one-sided.

Israel has nearly all the chips - mostly American weaponry and even bulldozers with which they have been vindictively flattening entire Gazan neighbourhoods. The cityscape of Gaza now looks pretty much like Hiroshima after it had been nuked.

It seems quite flabbergasting to me that Israel is now playing a key role in the distribution of vital food aid in Gaza. Is that what generally happens in "war" - with those who have the upper-hand simultaneously providing aid  to beleaguered enemy citizens? I think not. No wonder hundreds of Gazans have been tragically killed in their desperate quest for sustenance.

Today. the BBC News said this: "Israel's security cabinet has approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to take control of Gaza City" so instead of the barbarous offensive being toned down, it is instead being ramped up. Given what has taken place thus far, such an up-scaling seems nigh on impossible to visualise  but there we have it.

By standing idly by thus far, Trump has effectively given Netanyahu carte blanche to perform what history will call genocide. But the truth is that Netanyahu will never extinguish the Palestinian spirit and the legacy of all this cruelty will, in time, inevitably ignite some kind of painful retribution. Netanyahu will probably not be around when that time comes.

(Photo: Eyad Baba / AFP)

Rectangle

In past times, pretty much all of England's significant country estates would have boasted a walled kitchen garden. As there were no supermarkets, growing your own vegetables and fruit would have been a sensible option - especially if you could afford to hire a couple of gardeners to do the work for you.

The walls acted like a windbreak and discouraged thievery. Within, you could develop a micro-climate in which plants might thrive.

Above - I snipped that aerial view of the kitchen garden at Hungerford Park from Google Maps. The derelict house from which I snapped that window photo is in the top left hand corner of the rectangle - also shown at the bottom of this blogpost.

I did take a few pictures inside the walled garden that I am going to share with you now...

Damsons

Giant thistles

Cynara cardunculus

Ian, Zachary and sunflowers

Old water tanks being repurposed to create a water feature

And finally, this is the ruined gardener's house from which I took yesterday's window picture...

Gallery

 
View from the ruins of the gardener's cottage at Hungerford Park

You are probably familiar with the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Normally, it is a notion with which I might take issue for words frequently perform tasks that a picture could never do - explaining, investigating and reflecting.

That aside, today's blogpost is  largely eight images I collected during our sojourn in Berkshire. To Dave and Mary in particular, I must apologise because I didn't capture a decent overall picture of the walled kitchen garden but I have sourced one that someone else took and plonked it at the end of this blogpost.

Vintage RSPCA collection box in Newbury

A sturdy English oak in Hungerford Park

Amateur landscape painting at the top of the stairs in our rental house

The cluster of lampshades caught my eye when we lunched in The Cobrizo Lounge, Newbury

Zachary at 21 months in the walled garden at Hungerford Park

Narrow boat on the Kennet and Avon Canal

Weathered effigy of a crusader in St Michael's Church, Inkpen.

It is probably Sir Roger de Ingpen - a Templar knight - who is believed to 

have founded the church in 1220 or thereabouts.

A tantalising picture of part of  the walled garden

Afterwards

The Forge, Hungerford Park

To tell you the truth, it was nice to have five days away from blogging. 

The rental house was perfect - clean and well-maintained and peacefully located on the site of what was once Park Farm - connected with the Hungerford Park Estate. Once a grand house was at the heart of the parkland but that was demolished in the fifties I believe. An interesting remaining feature is the old walled kitchen garden that is surprisingly still cultivated and contains a wide range of healthy plants.

One day I came across the Polish gardener who has put his heart and soul into the garden over the last five years.  It now operates as a wedding venue. There are tables and chairs and a sail-like awning where the hot houses once stood.

Hungerford was just a mile away. Perhaps I am a little ghoulish but I hoped to pay homage to the dead. Sixteen people killed on a bright August day in 1987.  Surely there would be a fitting memorial and evidence of continuing condolences. 

In the parish church the names of the dead were on a modern glass partition beside the vestry door but you could have easily peeled those names off. It was nothing special. Then in another neighbourhood, we parked Butch near Hungerford Town football ground in order to visit the memorial garden.

To my surprise, the remembrance of the slaughtered sixteen was incidental - tagged on to a brick gatepost with the flower-less garden beyond principally being a tribute to townsfolk who died in World War II.

We looked after Zach for three nights as the wedding celebrations proceeded. He seemed magnetised by his grandma but suspicious of the monster known as "Grandpa". Still, he was as good as gold. 

Zach and his parents returned to London on Sunday afternoon, leaving Shirley and I with two nights and  one and a half days to ourselves. We had Sunday dinner in  "The Dundas Arms" in Kintbury and Monday lunch in "The Cobrizo Lounge" in Newbury. Monday evening's dinner was in "The John O'Gaunt Inn" back in Hungerford.

We also got to visit the church where the wedding had taken place and climbed to Combe Gibbet on Gallows Down where a tall wooden gibbet  reminds all passers-by of capital punishment. Near there, I also climbed over a field gate to reach the highest point in southeastern England - Walbury Hill.

More of this kind of stuff tomorrow.

Combe Gibbet

Berkshire

Tomorrow we will be off down south. I have rented a house in the Berkshire countryside - not far from the little town of Hungerford. It suffered a terrible tragedy in 1987 when a crazy shooter went on the rampage. Such mass shootings are very rare in Great Britain where it is very difficult to acquire guns. I hope to visit The Tragedy Garden and pay my respects to the sixteen innocent victims of Michael Ryan. Thankfully perhaps - he also killed himself.

But that's not the main reason we will be staying there. In a nearby village there will be a big wedding on Saturday. The bridegroom is going to be one of Sarah's brothers - Sarah being Ian's girlfriend and our grandson's mother. Shirley and I will be looking after little Zachary for much of the weekend.

It's going to be nice staying for five nights in a  quiet house in the country far from busy roads and it is a part of England that I hardly know though I once tied a handkerchief to the wire fence at nearby Greenham Common airbase. The handkerchief had belonged to my father and it had an embroidered blue "P" in one corner - P for Philip. With a laundry marker, I had drawn the famous "ban the bomb" symbol on that white linen...☮ before tying the knot.

With all my many health appointments in the last nine months, planning any kind of holiday has been tricky so these five days in Berkshire will be most welcome. As well as looking after young Zach, I hope to get some walking done in what is for me virgin territory.

Shirley will be taking her laptop with her and though I have never used it as a blogging device, I hope to be be able to post from our rental house - "The Forge". We will see. Otherwise, I will be back with you in the middle of next week.

Temperance

In the village of my happy childhood - seventy miles from this keyboard in the heart of The East Riding of Yorkshire - there used to be a disused Methodist chapel. It was called Temperance Hall. More than once I entered its dusty rooms with village chums and stood upon the disused stage when preachers once sermonised.

As a boy, I never realised the significance of the term "temperance" but it was very much to do with abstaining from the consumption of alcoholic drinks - something that was closely connected with Methodism. Of course, the opposite of temperance is "intemperance" and usually someone who is judged to be intemperate will be a boozer, straying from the path of righteousness.

Before writing this, I had a look back at three connected blogposts I created in January 2023 - all titled "Alcohol". You can read them here, here and here. My reflections seemed quite comprehensive and there is not much I would wish to add to all of that.

Today I am thinking about temperance or abstention, focusing on three men who are very dear to me - my older brother Robin who lives in France, my son Ian who lives in London and my best friend Tony who lives in Beverley, East Yorkshire.

In the past, all three of these jolly fellows enjoyed a regular tipple and with each of them I have enjoyed good times with drink from our bellies rising to our heads. Don't get me wrong - not staggering around but conversing or joking, nicely oiled. Happy and relaxed under the influence.

The last time I spoke to my only remaining brother over the phone, he told me that he has not drunk any alcohol since Christmas. In the past, he and his girlfriend Suzie would always have a glass or two of wine with their evening meals and if Robin had been out working or biking, there was nothing he liked better than a couple of cans of beer from the fridge to quench his evening thirst. But now - zilch! Nothing!

Last weekend, my son Ian told me has also not had any alcohol this year. It is a habit he has fallen out of and now as a runner, vegan spokesman and regular gym visitor, he is very conscious of his all-round health. Alcohol does not seem to fit in to that equation. In the past, he would occasionally binge drink and not just beer or wine but strong spirits as well. It really does appear that those days are over.

My friend Tony has not had any alcoholic beverages for over seven years now. Something scared him in the past as he reached a point where he realised that  he was plunging into full-blown alcoholism. He stopped imbibing drink and even joined a support group in which he could help others to battle their demons. I can't see him ever going back to beer or wine. Stuff happened that he could not even remember.

And so we arrive at me - your genial host. I must confess that I still love beer and different wines too but my intake is greatly reduced from say twenty years ago. There are many days and nights when not a drop of alcohol passes my lips and a boozy night for me is now just four pints of "Stones" bitter at the Sunday pub quiz. I do not feel motivated to join the temperance movement like Robin, Ian and Tony and maybe I never will. As cool folk sometimes say, "I got this".

How about you?