Guide

Fourteen years ago, I blogged about Doris and Ken - a sweet old couple who once lived on the corner of our street. They had no living family in England - just a niece in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

As a family, we befriended them and I oversaw some key matters for them as their lives entered the endgame  - arranging residential home places, their funerals and the clearance and sale  of their house.

In some ways, their home was like a museum that accommodated so much evidence of the wholesome lives they had lived. They had both been born before World War One.

 

Doris was involved in girl guiding, first as a girl guide and then later as a guide leader. Amongst her many papers I found an edition of "The Guide" dated November 11th, 1922 - "A journal for lovers of the open air, camping, hobbies etc.."  That flimsy magazine is now 103 years old and it is in effect washed up historical detritus from a very different age.

I just want to share two features from this magazine with you. First of all, I am aware that nowadays many lady bloggers and visitors have little idea how to make full use of their aprons....

I do not know if you can read that but essentially readers are being advised to hook their aprons to the table in order to create a kind of hammock. Very useful for peeling vegetables, shelling peas or polishing shoes etc.. And below there's great advice for fashion-conscious lady bloggers who  who are not quite sure how to put their hair up into bobs. Again, it might be tricky to read but both styles being addressed require several fine hair pins. As Edna Yorke who sent in the item declared, "These ideas will be found quite easy and practicable." Thank you for your attention to this matter!!! And thanks also to Edna for her sterling work with girl guides in Rugeley, Staffordshire. It was a long time ago.

Phubbing

 

You might have heard the term before but for me it was a new word when I heard it explained on BBC Radio 4 yesterday. It's "phubbing" - a clever conflation of "phoning" and "snubbing". "Phubbing" happens all the time when phone users ignore the people they are with in real life in favour of their phones.

Perhaps one should not blame phone users as much as we should blame the phone manufacturers and network providers. They have created an environment in which millions of people are hooked on their smartphones. For some, it is where their "best lives" reside - in favoured YouTube channels, whatsapp groups, social media and so on. All of that can, I imagine, be very comforting and less challenging than living entirely in the real world. 

When Shirley and I were in Newbury, Berkshire we went to a high street eatery. Sitting upstairs in the mezzanine area, I noticed a family of six coming up the stairs. The children were teenagers. They sat at a big table near to us and checked out the menu. 

After their orders were placed with the affable waitress, they did not interact as happy families used to do. Instead, all six got out their smartphones and were soon tapping away, chuckling or goggle-eyed as they studied their little screens. This went on for twenty minutes until their food orders arrived. It was as if they were drugged or hypnotised.

I myself have sometimes been a victim of phubbing. Since Shirley acquired her first smartphone she has become more and more enamoured with it and when walking in the countryside with my friend Tony, several natural conversations have been interrupted by his phone. I always feel like saying, "No! Don't answer that frigging thing. You are talking to me!"

Phubbing is yet more proof that this is a mad world. Before I leave this topic, I have a couple of side concerns to share. 

All over the planet people are charging their smartphones - often daily or nightly. That's a hell of a lot of electricity being drained from our tired planet. Aren't we supposed to be conserving our resources?

Secondly, why must smartphones be continuously replaced? Manufacturing them is another huge drain on our planet's finite resources. I guess that the prime reason is to keep profits rolling in for smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung.  It's a "live for today and forget about tomorrow" business model. "Screw The Earth" should probably be their shared motto.

Camel

It is a long time ago now and I can't remember the exact year but it was in the early nineties. At that time, yet another bandwagon rolled into the educational landscape. This time the driving notion was that secondary school teachers knew zilch about the commercial world. By allowing them to spend a little time in industry or commerce, they would be able to return to their schools better able to advise children on working life beyond the school gates.

I believe that the initiative was called Teachers into Industry (TiI) and for a brief spell it received substantial government funding. I jumped at the chance and was able to specify that I wanted to experience work in the advertising industry.

Of course the beating heart of all advertising in Great Britain is London but some advertising agencies do and did exist in other parts of the country. Unbeknown to me, Sheffield was home to a thriving little business called Camel Advertising. They were housed in a big stone house on Queens Road.

I worked there for two weeks and enjoyed every minute. There were no switched off children in sight and every member of the thirty strong team was pulling in the same direction - keeping the company above water and spreading its tentacles into new fields. There was a real buzz about the place. It felt like being a bee in a productive hive.

Outside in the car park, leading members of the team parked their shiny new cars. There was a yellow Ferrari and a silver Jaguar. Camel Advertising was proud and profitable and what I liked best is that it was a hotbed of creativity. There were graphic designers, a photographer and a creative director. They had begun to specialise in promoting computer games.

In the late 1970s I had investigated a potential alternative career in advertising and even sent out speculative letters. Camel was all that I hoped an advertising agency might be and I know this might sound stupid but in my two weeks with them, I sought to make a good impression partly because in the part of my brain marked "Fantasy", I was hoping they would offer me a job. 

Then I would be able to get off the treadmill of secondary school teaching and leave behind all the pettiness of school politics and recalcitrant kids who were resistant to education. Drawn from a large neighbourhood of social housing, there were many such pupils. Sometimes it could feel as though you were banging your head against a brick wall. Couldn't I use my energy and natural abilities in a more positive, creative workplace?

Anyway, my ploy did not work but they liked me right enough. I even appeared in our local newspaper "The Sheffield Star" as the project was deemed newsworthy and it reflected well upon Camel.

Amongst other tasks, I wrote the copy for a few double-page magazine spreads, including two computer gambling games called "Casino" and "The Big Deal" - "Enough to get Cool Hand Luke hot under the collar".

On the afternoon I left Camel, they presented me with a framed version of that very advertisement. On the back was a label that read: "To Neil - from your friends in The Camel Group". I received it gratefully but it was not quite as good as being offered a career switch.

Anyway, all of this came to mind when we recently disposed of a bunch of framed pictures that had been residing in our dark underhouse area. And now Cool Hand Luke has got to go too. After all, you cannot hang on to everything  - even pipe dreams from long ago. At least I will have the memory - here in this blogpost.

The building on Queens Road that was once home 

to Camel Advertising - now sadly demolished

Stats

Top visitor countries in last thirty days

Visitors who do not publish blogs of their own may not be aware that in the background "Blogger" provides bloggers with surprisingly comprehensive and up-to-date stats about how their blogs are doing. For example, you can find out your league table of visits by country. You can also find out the number of "hits" your top twenty blogposts had in the last twenty four hours.  In addition, you can  see tracking graphs and suchlike.

By the way, most of my visitors during the past six months reside in the USA, far outnumbering both Hong Kong and Great Britain who are second and third respectively on my list.  For several years, Great Britain and the USA were running neck and neck but not any more. In the last thirty days, "Yorkshire Pudding" has attracted 107,000 visits from America alone.

It sometimes bemuses me which blogposts appear in my 24 hour list and after twenty years of regular blogging I find I had totally  forgotten many of those posts. It can almost be like reading the ramblings of a complete stranger. For example this old post received fifty four readers yesterday. I wrote it on March 10th 2020 just before Great Britain went into its first COVID-19 lockdown. I guess it is a little piece of history now.

Every blogpost I have published in the past year has received over two hundred visits. However, some posts have attracted considerably more people. My "Quiztime" posts have been particularly fruitful with some of these receiving four or five hundred visitors. Posts that have been titled "Poem" are much less popular which is somewhat discouraging I must say even though I am well aware that poetry is not everybody's cup of tea.

In the past few days, I have noticed something weird happening with my visitor stats.  My "Malton" post of August 20th has received 1098 visits, my "Slaithwaite" post from Monday night has attracted over seven hundred visits and yesterday's Beatles "Quiztime" has achieved a massive 1418 visitors already.

I am very suspicious of these recent  figures. They are way out of sync with my usual visitor pattern. However, it is pretty much impossible to report such an issue to "Blogger" which seems to have been designed with a well-constructed invisible barrier in place to deter questions, suggestions and complaints from users.

Please don't imagine that I am in any way obsessed with the stats that "Blogger" provides because I am not. It is just that occasionally I like to have a look at them to see what is going on behind the scenes.

Quiztime

Think of England and you think of The Beatles so let us have a fun quiz about them! As usual, the answers will be given in the comments section.

⦿

1) Which song on the "Sergeant Pepper" album is represented by this image?

2) In which Liverpool street was there "a barber showing photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know"?

3) Who were The Beatles meeting in March 1964?

4) What was John Lennon's middle name?

(a) Barnstaple (b) Leonard (c) Winston (d) Crispin

5) Which Beatles single was the bestseller of all in Great Britain?

(a) "Paperback Writer"  (b) "She Loves You" 

(c) "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (d) "Twist and Shout"

6) Which Beatles single was the bestseller of all in the USA?

(a) "Paperback Writer"  (b) "She Loves You" 

(c) "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (d) "Twist and Shout"

7) Always associated with The Beatles and the original bass player - who is this young man? He died in Hamburg, Germany at the age of 21.

8) From which Beatles song are these words taken?

Life is very short and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend

9) Some visitors are standing outside the gates of a famous former children's home in Liverpool that inspired one of The Beatles' best loved songs but where are they? 

10) Born on February 25th 1943, who was the youngest Beatle?

⦿

That's all folks! How did you do?

Extras

The old Slaithwaite Road

All I have for you today is five more images from my visit to Slaithwaite and its environs. I toyed with the idea of sharing some thoughts about Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelce. Then I considered reflecting on Fatty Trump's vindictive targeting of  Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. Another idea was to have a closer look at Nigel Farage and the eerie rise of The Reform Party here in Great Britain. Perhaps I could write about the day I met Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd or sleeping in a tent on Lindisfarne when it rained heavily all the following day. Possibly another "Quiztime" or how it is when a lovely English summer starts to turn to autumn... But no - just five more pictures from yesterday's adventure - thirty miles north of here...

Laund Farm with Meltham Cop behind

A view of Deer Hill reservoir

An old bank in Slaithwaite - now a restaurant

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal in Slaithwaite

Slaithwaite

The River Colne and a former textiles mill in Slaithwaite

Just the other day, Steve at "Shadows and Light" was reflecting upon  the pronunciation of place names. In response, I mentioned Slaithwaite - a former industrial village in the Colne Valley just west of Huddersfield here in Yorkshire.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that I had never been to Slaithwaite nor rambled in its environs. As the forecasters promised that today (Monday) would be a warm blue sky day, I was keen to take a good long walk and decided to drive up to Slaithwaite. It is over an hour away from our house.

Remote ruin I came across - named "Nathans" on old maps

I parked Butch close to "The Silent Woman" public house and a few minutes later I was sitting in Ashbys cafe on Britannia Road with a sausage and tomato sandwich and a latte - having decided to fuel up before my long walk.

The situation of Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawit) requires a little explaining. It is down in the valley where The River Colne, the Leeds-Manchester  railway, The Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the A62 trunk road from Huddersfield to Oldham all advance from east to west. The valley sides are pretty steep leading to farms, hamlets and short terraces of stone houses  via rising lanes, tracks and paths.

My intention was to walk up onto the moors south of Slaithwaite, taking in two reservoirs - Deer Hill and Blackmoorfoot - before looping back to "The Silent Woman" where I was looking forward to a pint of shandy to mark the end of my little Bank Holiday adventure.

Walkers on the dam - Deer Hill Reservoir

The steep valley side slowed me down and so did the shooting ranges close to Deer Hill Reservoir because I was forced to make a diversion - adding forty minutes to what was already a fairly long walk.

But on such a diamond day,  I thoroughly enjoyed my endless plodding. There's something most satisfying about the exhaustion that such a walk can create - but not quite as satisfying as that lovely pint of cold bitter shandy in the welcome shade  of "The Silent Woman".

"The Silent Woman" with Butch just beyond the cones

婷婷乐游记

 婷婷乐游记 = Tingting's Travels

I came across another Chinese YouTube channel devoted to exploring the Chinese countryside. Again there is a young woman in front of the camera and a young man behind it. In the selected video, they are in the province of Guizhou where their aim is to visit an old  mountaintop temple complex. The walk up there is long but not scary.

The location is so peaceful with natural greenery burgeoning all around as cicadas sing from the undergrowth. This is a different China from the China of bullet trains, industry and big cities. Even the controlling power of state communism seems far distant.

My appreciation of the video was interrupted by occasional ad breaks and if the same happens with you, I apologise. Just click "Skip" whenever you can. 

In this troubled world, it is kind of nice to follow a winding dirt track up a green mountain and see the golden Buddhist statues at the top.

We often hear references to periods of Chinese history known as "dynasties". I don't know about you but for me those references have always been puzzling because my ignorance about Chinese history runs pretty deep.

For the purposes of this blogpost, I discovered that before the arrival of these modern times the last great  imperial Chinese dynasty was the Qing dynasty that lasted from 1644 to 1912. Before that came the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It is sometimes said that there were in total thirteen great Chinese dynasties stretching back two thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ to the Xia dynasty (2070-1600 B.C.)

The name Qing is pronounced "Ching".

See an earlier blogpost which features Qingyunji Xiaoxue - another Chinese countryside explorer who has visited some incredible and occasionally scary places. Go here.

Song

"Landing at Anzac" by Charles Dixon

"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

I first heard this anti-war song in the mid-1970s. It was written by a Scottish-Australian fellow called Eric Bogle. The song tells a story of World War I. In Australia's collective memory, the name Gallipoli spells bitter  tragedy for that is where 8709 young Australian  troops were killed in the winter of 1915-16 and a further 28,150 suffered significant injuries. They were a long way from home fighting a war that arguably had very little to do with them.

Incidentally, whenever I hear the song I think of my brother Paul who played fiddle in a semi-professional band called Dingle Spike. It was on their one and only album - also called Dingle Spike. They should have toured Irish music venues on the east coast of America in 1978 but because Paul had once been a card carrying member of the British Communist Party, the tour had to be cancelled.

"Waltzing Matilda" is of course Australia's unofficial national anthem and it also oozes sorrow. I did not wish to copy and paste all of the lyrics of "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" but here at least are the opening lines followed by the song itself sung meaningfully by Vincent Fottroll in Dublin's fair city:-

When I was a young man I carried me pack

And I lived the free life of the rover

From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback

I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in 1915 my country said: Son,

It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun

And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda

When the ship pulled away from the quay

And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers

We sailed off for Gallipoli...

Spitefulness

Does the narrow-minded spitefulness of America's current president know no bounds? Instead of focusing upon his job, world affairs and the future, he seems to spend a lot of his time settling old scores. He is so terribly petty. Anyone who has crossed him becomes a target of his unbridled nastiness.

He abuses his position, calling upon the many powers that presidents possess for purely selfish revenge campaigns. Today, although he denies any involvement, he has sought to crucify John Bolton - using the FBI as hunting dogs. Bolton was in the president's first cabinet as National Security Advisor and has held other high offices of state.

However, like many others before him. he fell out of favour with the current president and later even wrote a book titled "The Room Where It Happened" in which he dared to dig into the reasons why the current president is not fit to lead his country.

Yesterday, I noticed that the 47th president is wearing a new red cap with this legend embroidered upon it: "TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING". The audacity of this is breathtaking. Such arrogance. Such ignorance. And of course the claim is far from being true.

Just as an example - has Mexico yet paid for the southern border wall as he promised? Besides, that southern wall is far from being complete - in fact it will probably never be finished.

And was he right to form a brotherly friendship with the disgraced and now deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein? The current president appears to be doing everything in his power to distract the media and the American people from what went on between him and Epstein. At one point he even claimed that he did not know Jeffrey Epstein.

The blaggard bigs himself up at every opportunity and any humility he very occasionally appears to show is merely theatrical - as hollow as a drum. Though his social media site is called "Truth Social", truth really does not matter to him. 

John Bolton is in his own way a rather despicable character and a warmonger too. In spite of that and just like the current president, he also dodged the draft that should have seen him fighting in the war in Vietnam like his peers. However, I hope that today's invasion of his home by the FBI sees him getting away without charges against him - pouring yet more disgrace upon the so-called Commander in Chief.

Bathtime

We had booked a suite in "The Talbot Hotel", Malton. It was spacious with a massive bed and well-appointed bathroom.

On our second morning, I woke at seven o'clock and decided to have a bath before breakfast. No need to rush and there was a reliable hot water supply too.

Now I must confess that it had been almost sixteen years since I last had a bath. That was in the Hotel Cordon del Plata in Mendoza, Argentina in late October 2009. There, because of overbooking, I had been given the penthouse suite - the best room in the hotel.

It had a sunken jacuzzi bath and I decided to use it - even though by at that stage in my life I had been converted to showering long before. Vaguely, I can still recall lying in that bubbling bath Like Lord Muck - minus the cigar and the bottle of champagne. I clambered out before drying and dressing and heading out into the late spring night for food.

In Malton, I lay there luxuriating in the hot water. I used the products that were provided to cleanse the temple that is my body and the flowing locks that adorn my skull. A young sea otter bobbed in the water.

Then it was time to get up and out. But how? Shirley was in the lounge reading and knitting and I nearly yelled to her for assistance but after a couple of failed attempts, I girded my loins and with a huge amount of willpower managed to stand up without slipping and killing myself. I tell you, it was not easy.

Obviously, I later put in a serious complaint at the hotel reception. Why had no mechanical hoist been provided to lift old codgers like me out of that treacherous bath? Quite outrageous.

When I was a boy I frequently leapt out of baths like a coiled spring. We didn't even have a shower in my childhood home. Even in Mendoza - I have no recollection of finding it difficult to get out of that luxury bath. Sixteen years later, I wonder if I will ever have a bath again. After all, I could be stuck there forever.

Malton

Back from Malton now. It's amazing what memories can be forged in a mere two day break.

Though we saw very little rain, the sky above us was essentially a king-sized light grey quilt, blocking out sunshine and ensuring that the colours of the world around us were rather muted. Driving over The Yorkshire Wolds on back roads from Driffield to Malton would have been pretty exhilarating in bright sunshine - with the vast wheatfields  still being harvested and The Yorkshire Moors brooding in a northerly distance.

On Tuesday, Shirley and I undertook a four mile walk east of The River Derwent. We parked Butch (new car) in the village of Westow and then a mile away, in the hamlet of Firby, we spotted some photogenic cattle which rather saved the day - photographically speaking...

The pilgrimage aspect of this break took me to my father's childhood home in Norton-upon-Derwent which sits directly opposite Malton. In fact, it's really just one big town community separated by the river and the railway track.

I also saw the grave of my paternal grandparents Thomas and Margaret. They are buried in the same plot where their youngest son, my Uncle Jack was interred in 1940 after being killed on active duty with The Royal Air Force. Thomas died at the age of 72 just a month before I was born. I left the three of them potted white chrysanthemums in remembrance.

Co-incidentally, my best friend Tony was also born and raised in Norton and Malton. We visited his childhood home and saw the place where he was born - a grand Edwardian residence in the village of Westow which once boasted a maternity unit. 

I also walked up to Malton Grammar School where my father and Uncle Jack were pupils in the late twenties/early thirties. Tony followed in their footsteps in the early 1970s when he joined the school's sixth form.

On a gable end wall near Malton's historical marketplace,  a  special  recipe has been proudly displayed. Can you see what it is for?

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:-

⦿

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.

⦿

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?