Farewell Dear Clint -
Thou wert my trusted friend
Loyal and true to the very end
We travelled far and journeyed wide,
Courage grew with you on my side.
I parked you in villages far away
And polished your bonnet every day
But now dear chap the end is nigh -
I'll remember you sweetly till I die.
Clint and The Pudding - a dynamic pair
You drove me just about everywhere.
Now another driver will turn your key
Someone else - who isn't me.
Down in London, the underground railway network is commonly known as "The Tube". Of course, half the people who visit this corner of the blogosphere will have direct personal experience of "The Tube". However, the other half may never have been to London and will therefore have only a dim awareness of what "The Tube" is like in reality.
It is the world's oldest underground railway system and with eleven tracks and 272 stations, it remains one of the largest networks even though it has been overtaken by a dozen Chinese cities and Moscow too.
But my purpose in making this blogpost is not to spew out facts and figures about "The Tube" and how it compares with other underground railways. No, I wanted to focus on the people who ride "The Tube".
Every journey is different with an ever changing cast of actors and actresses boarding the train and leaving it. You never know who will come together. Different people with different stories to tell if you could only corral them in order to record their varied tales.
If you are lucky enough to have a seat, you look across at the people facing you. You note the different ethnicities - travellers from every corner of the world... Africans, Asians, Scandinavians, people from the south of Europe, North Americans, South Americans, Arabs, Jews, Australians. There are even people from The British Isles! And there are old people, young people, children, disabled people, poor people, wealthy people, people who have been to football matches, tennis players, students, hippies, Goths, tattooed people and the unadorned too. Some carry bags from "Harrods" while others carry musical instruments, flowers or huge suitcases.
Almost always. there is a calm, unwritten respect between passengers. They police themselves as they move between stations. The atmosphere is rarely intimidating even during busy times when the carriages are packed - with standing room only. We are all social beings and "The Tube" is a great leveller. Briefly - while riding on those subterranean trains - everybody is equal.
The others are strangers that we will probably never see ever again. This is what it means to be in a city of ten million humans. Nowadays, many lone travellers can be seen inspecting the screens on their smartphones - secret worlds where they can briefly hide away and avert their eyes as the tube train thunders onward to Pimlico or Putney Bridge, Sloane Square or Stepney Green, Holborn or Hornchurch.
Friday, the 1pm train to St Pancras is cancelled so we have to catch a local train to Doncaster, then take an East Coast Mainland train to King's Cross. We get there in less than two hours and London is even warmer than Sheffield... Into the underground rail system... Hammersmith and City Line to Edgware Road... An American woman drops her Oyster Travel Card as she leaves the train and it drops onto the track. She tells me she had paid £200 for it that very day. We wait till she has found a member of staff to help her... Then on to The District Line to West Brompton... We walk along Lillie Road and stop at a toy shop... Buy Zachary a wooden spinning top, a "Playmobil" human figure with a dinosaur and an inflatable banana... Ian is bringing Zach along their street in his pushchair... He has been at nursery school all day...Ian makes us a wonderful vegan Caesar salad with mushrooms, tofu and homemade wholewheat croutons followed by Sarah's lovely rhubarb crumble... I visit the nearby "Bedford Arms" for the first time... two pints of "London Pride" then back...
(Take a breath)
Saturday - Shirley and I walk to "The Half Moon Cafe" on Fulham Palace Road for brunch while Zach is having his midday nap...We spot "Core Femme" outside Charing Cross Hospital...Later 74 bus to Bishop's Park... There's a sandy beach there and children's playgrounds. Local people having outdoor time with their kids... Nearby The River Thames flows and we go up the bank to see it. There's a nice breeze as a team of eight rowers go by on their way to Putney Bridge... We buy some supplies from "Costcutter" then it's back to Ian's house... Evening meal for Zach, then bathtime and bed... All weekend Zach has been saying "pider" - pider, pider, pider because he has been shown one and it really interests him but also "moth" for two or three moths are resting on the ceiling... Maybe he will be an entomologist... Ian orders a Lebanese meal which is delivered after half an hour... Lovely wraps and tabbouleh with hummus, babu ganesh and flatbreads... I watch Trump on television saluting his birthday parade - a guy who dodged the draft for heaven's sake and his sidekick Angry Hegseth looking like a clown who is out of his depth...
Sunday morning toast and coffee... I opt to remain out back in the sunshine reading my book while they hot foot it to the Waitrose in Chelsea for more vital supplies... I doze and when I open my eyes they are back... It's Father's Day and Ian makes a lovely vegan brunch with roasted tomatoes and chick peas plus a tofu version of scrambled egg with sourdough toast... Goodbyes then bus back to West Brompton... Tube back to St Pancras where it is chaotic getting on the 15.32 train back to the land we call Up North... Delighted to bag two seats in Coach B and we rattle along home - Shirley knitting and me reading... Kettering, Leicester, Loughborough and Derby... Sheffield buses along Ecclesall Road are in short supply so we spot a taxi and climb aboard...£10...then cheese on toast before I catch my bus to "The Hammer and Pincers" quiz... The word of the weekend is definitely "pider" (Adult English: spider)...
Dear Blogland,
We wish to apologise for the absence of our son Yorkshire this weekend. Once again he has boarded a choo-choo train bound for London and will not be back in Sheffield till Sunday evening.
(3) By volume and map coverage, which is the biggest ocean on Earth?
(4) Which ocean laps the shores of Antarctica?
(6) Situated in the eastern Pacific Ocean what is the usual name for Isla de Pascua or Rapa Nui?
(7) If you were sailing from Madagascar to Sri Lanka, across which ocean would you be travelling?
Famous people die all the time. Hardly a day goes by without hearing about another celebrated human's death. Mostly those deaths have little impact upon us but once in a while a death can make us stop in our tracks, giving pause for thought... like Queen Elizabeth II, John F. Kennedy, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Ted Hughes, Hilary Mantel, Tony Benn... Yes, some deaths of famous people seem to matter more than others - at least it feels that way.
Today the world said farewell to the once brilliant songwriter and music producer Brian Wilson - both the heart and the brains of The Beach Boys. I saw them in concert once at The Great Western Express music festival in Lincolnshire. It was Sunday May 28th, 1972 and in the last sunshine of that happy day, as fans threw straw in the air, Brian Wilson and his fellow Californians proved what wondrous sounds they could produce without any need for recording studio trickery. Awesome.
He gave the assembled crowd really good vibrations... and now he is no more. He was 82 and it appears that he had been suffering from dementia in his final years. In his memory, please listen:-
The number 272 bus passes close to our house every hour in the daytime. It goes way beyond the city's boundaries to Hathersage, Bradwell, Hope and Castleton. Miss it and you will have a long wait.
After yet another doctor's appointment this morning, I was at the bus stop in plenty of time for the 11.58 bus and its arrival was punctual. This was the first part of my plan for a linear long walk.
I did it in one hour fifteen minutes and I would have been quicker if I had not stopped to chat with another lone figure - a tourist from Hong Kong who has been in Great Britain for the past three months and is heading back home in two days' time. He was delighted to hear that I have been to Hong Kong but wondered why I cannot speak Cantonese!
Then down into Porter Clough at the head of The Porter Valley. Fortunately, it was all downhill for me. After passing through the Forge Dam area, I saw a man approaching - another lone walker.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
He seemed puzzled.
Then I explained that I recognised him from a concert we had both attended in the mid-eighties. It was in the upstairs concert room of a pub on Infirmary Road. We were there to see the legendary Robin Williamson who performed at Woodstock with The Incredible String Band.
The other bloke was astonished that I remembered the two of us chatting with Robin Williamson at the interval and was perhaps even more astonished when I asked, "Is your name Pedro?"
"Yes, yes it is!" he said.
I wished him all the best as he carried on up the valley to Forge Dam and beyond. Little did he know that he had just encountered The Great Yorkshire Pudding, Memory Man, Blogger Extraordinaire and human agent for the "Land of Lost Gnomes"!
You do not have to be mad to work for Yorkshire Pudding Enterprises Ltd but it certainly helps.
Last week, we bought a new garden gnome at "Poundland". His name is Roger and he only cost three pounds. A stout and handsome little gnome with a white beard and quite heavy too. I knew the very spot where he would be placed in our garden and I was looking forward to installing him in his new home.
In the shop, Mistress Pudding volunteered to put Roger in her shopping bag - a proposal to which I foolishly assented. Sure enough, when said shopping bag was later unpacked in our kitchen, the top of Roger's pointy hat had broken off. What a tragedy!
I was mortified and after sobbing for over an hour, I admitted to myself that with the broken hat, I could no longer provide Roger with the home that I had promised him. Sadly, Roger had to go.
Over the next few days, I hatched an alternative plan. I would make a little sanctuary for Roger at a secret place on the edge of the city. Not wanting to leave the beardie little man there on his own, I decided that he would be accompanied by two of our other gnomes who have seen better days - Tasker and Stephen (with "ph" in the middle).
Henceforth, I planned that they would live in a woodland sanctuary called "Land of Lost Gnomes".
I took the gang of three to their new home this very afternoon... "Land of Lost Gnomes" and even prepared a wooden stake to mark their new neighbourhood. It is a little off the beaten track so any visitors will need to stumble upon the location. In my dreams, more lost gnomes will appear in the coming months and years till the surrounding woodland is filled with them - broken gnomes, the faded, the unwanted - all the gnomes that nearby city dwellers do not want any more.
What should we make of the public disconnection between Trump and Musk that has blown up this past week? The most powerful politician on the planet splits with the richest man on the planet in what seems to be a car crash of an ending. He said this and he said that. Threats bordering on disembowelment. One has "X" and the other has the ironically named "Truth Social" - personal platforms for name-calling and abuse with the world looking in.
Personally, I don't believe a word of it. They are two such despicable humans that I would not put it past them to have engineered the entire shit show with some endgame agreed for the future. It appears that the world has been rocked by two unfunny clowns falling out but there may be more to this than meets the eye.
Musk suggests that Trump got up to no good when he was in Jeffrey Epstein's unsavoury circle but that would not shock us for we know Trump had a long history of immorality before entering The White House. And what was Musk's DOGE enterprise all about anyway? Certainly not about making life better for ordinary American citizens - that's for sure.
Surely, surely the immediate future of our planet cannot be swayed by the clashing of two cartoon figures - Beavis and Butthead. Surely, surely we are bigger and better than that and what has been going on is a mere charade planned by the two unlikable combatants who pride themselves on their cunning.
Today was the occasion of The Rugby League Challenge Cup Final. It was held at Wembley Stadium in London. This cup competition is the oldest rugby competition in the world - dating back to 1896.
Hull K.R captain Elliot Minchella was interviewed straight after the mtch
I was at the old Wembley Stadium the last time they won the competition - back in 1980 when they played local rivals Hull F.C.. To tell you the truth, I do not remember much about that day - it was so long ago but it was certainly a glorious day for the city of Hull with 95,000 fervent rugby fans descending upon London ahead of the game.
The only other time I have been to a Rugby League Challenge Cup Final was back in 1998 with Shirley, Ian and Frances when underdogs Sheffield Eagles defeated the mighty Wigan. What a happy day out that was! The next day I even got to hold the trophy when our team came home.
From the age of eleven to sixteen, in order to attend school, I used to travel into the city of Hull from my village. The service bus travelled along Holderness Road passing the old Hull Kingston Rovers Stadium - Craven Park opposite East Park so naturally I have always felt connected to the club.
This afternoon, I walked into the city centre. From locking our front door to arriving at "The Showroom" cinema took exactly forty eight minutes.. I was there to see the film version of "The Salt Path" starring Gillian Anderson as Raynor Winn and Jason Isaacs as her husband Moth. Some readers may remember me reviewing this book during the time of COVID. Go here.
I had heard some negative film reports but having enjoyed the book I was determined to see the film for myself. Besides, John Gray over at "Going Gently" recently wrote fondly about the film. Go here.
I was very glad that I bothered. I felt that the film-makers did a fine job of transferring the 274 page personal account onto the silverscreen. Very sensitively done with the full approval of the authoress herself. In my opinion, playing Raynor Winn, Gillian Anderson did a brilliant job. She delivered her lines as though she had been born and raised in Staffordshire, England and not in various places like Chicago, Illinois and Grand Rapids, Michigan. What a talented actress she is.
It was lovely to watch a film that is gentle, relatable and life-affirming. There are no guns or knives, just a path to trudge along with rucksacks on the lead characters' backs. Nature revealed many things to Raynor and Moth and there were emotional ups and downs - a trajectory that mirrored the rising and falling nature of the path itself.
Last month, "The Guardian" reviewer wrote in glowing terms about "The Salt Path" and yet surprisingly only awarded it three stars. I think my only complaint would be that it ended too soon. The film did not take us to the very end of the coastal walk and I would have happily sat through another hour or so.
As is so often the case, it was cancer that got him. He died last month at home with a lot of end-of-life care being provided by St Luke's - our local hospice.
It was nice that the service was humanist - led by a well-informed and kindly celebrant with not a whiff of that religious claptrap that we so often have to endure at funerals. "He is with God now" - I am sorry but no he is not - he is just dead, plain dead - and nothing continues but the memories.
Paul would have been proud of his three grown-up children. They each went up to the dais and delivered dignified but heartfelt reflections upon the loss of a father they had dearly loved and respected. He meant the world to them and in his honour, they managed to hold themselves together.
Paul was a working class lad made good. He spent most of his working life with the probation service - focusing particularly upon children. He never forgot his roots in the north east of England where his socialist outlook on life was shaped. As well as his wife Janice and family, he loved written words and beer and music - though not necessarily in that order.
Gaza
I
watched the news from Gaza
It
appeared on our TV.
Amidst
the dust and rubble,
A
small boy looked at me.
His
eyes spoke of the terror
And
the awful sights he’d seen,
Tortured
by a cruel sense
Of
what life might have been.
I
heard the news from Gaza
On the
internet last night
Of how
today’s Knesset
Marches
with the right,
Its
weaponry imported from
The
good old USA -
Seems
no one can stop them
No
matter what we say.
I read
the news from Gaza
In
language shaped by shame
Of
innocents departed
And
never seen again.
Small
boy beneath the concrete
No
time to run or hide
Buried now forever
In a
place called Genocide.
Are you like me and Shirley? We shake our heads about what keeps on happening in Gaza but what can we do? Must the world stand by and let it happen? The Marsh family from Faversham in Kent, England decided to at least do something. They recorded this heartfelt parody or adaptation of "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls. If it is technically possible and you are not hard of hearing, please listen...
Today I undertook a long constitutional after parking Clint in the hamlet of Troway which is situated just a couple of miles south east of Sheffield. I checked my watch as I set off - 11.40am. It was 2.20pm when I returned to my trusty South Korean vehicle.
From the word go, I thoroughly enjoyed that circular walk. I was in the mood to do it. One foot in front of the other as the promised "sunny intervals" came true. Hidden birds performed their timeless tunes and I only saw one other human - a bearded man walking his dog. He was trudging up Owler Car Lane as I descended into The Moss Valley. "I like the way you're walking pal!" he said.
At first I thought he was praising my swivelling hip action but he was talking about me walking downhill rather than uphill.
The walk took in Povey Farm, the hamlet of Birleyhay and Fold Farm. Two thirds of the way round, I sat on a bench for five minutes to drink some water from my steel flask and to eat a banana and an apple. Sitting there, I felt strangely at peace with the world - devilish thoughts suppressed, my heart beating like a metronome as somewhere nearby a woodpecker drilled intermittently into a tree.
Let's take "Diversity" to begin with. Surely, it's about ensuring that everybody gets a look in, no matter what their race, socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation or physical attributes. That has got to be a good thing for in the past far too much talent was wasted because of various forms of discrimination when diversity was not catered for.
Secondly - "Equity". Isn't that what Martin Luther King was talking about in his "I have a dream" speech? Equity means each individual or group of people being given the same resources and opportunities, regardless of their circumstances. I guess that it is not much different from "diversity". Equity is about being equal so that if you happen to have been born into a wealthy family in say Queens, New York City your treatment is demonstrably no different from someone born into poverty in Jackson, Mississippi.
My mind can be like a randomising tombola drum and what has been coughed up today is a place called Katherine in Australia's Northern Territory. I admit that until I decided to embark on this virtual journey, the only places in The Northern Territory that I was aware of were Alice Springs and the capital of the territory - Darwin.
He was the 44th president of The United States, a role that he occupied with wisdom and dignity.
When you compare President Obama with the 45th/47th president, the contrast is quite remarkable. The current president usually emphasises Mr Obama's middle name whenever he mentions him. Thus it is rarely simply "Barack Obama", it's "Barack Hussein Obama" as though to imply that second name is loaded with evidence of foreignness or otherness. It is an incredibly rude thing to do - the sort of thing you expect adolescent bully boys to say.
The name "Hussein" was given to baby Barack by his father who had converted to Islam some years before the birth. By the way, there are around 4.5 million Muslims in the USA and their numbers once included the great Muhammad Ali. Although Barack Obama is not and never has been a Muslim, shouldn't the President of the USA be respectful of other people's faiths and differences anyway? I think so.
As day by day the world reads or listens to the ignorant, often cruel, fallacious and egotistical words of the current president, it's nice to be reminded that presidents don't have to be like that or talk like that. Here's a character reference for Barack Obama in four quotations...
