Views

Early this afternoon, I sat in Frances and Stewart's house to watch my team on Sky Sports TV. Though we probably did not merit the victory down on the south coast, my beloved Hull City beat Portsmouth by one goal to nil. Frances, Stewart and the girls are away for two nights with old friends and all their relatively new children - down in Northamptonshire.

After the game, I took my camera upstairs to get a few shots from Phoebe's bedroom. It enjoys great views to the east. The top picture shows The Royal Hallamshire Hospital that was opened by Prince Charles - now King Charles III - in 1978, soon after I came to live in Sheffield. More importantly Shirley was working there when I met her - in The Accident and Emergency Department. The hospital has figured in our lives in other ways too as you can well imagine. 

Directly across from Phoebe's window you look out on a cliffside below Psalter Lane. You can see a cross and a light green roof. That is St William's Catholic Church. The rising terraced houses right of there are on Ecclesall Road - one of the main southern thoroughfares out of the city. The cliffside has not always been thus. It was the result of historic stone quarrying.

Turn the camera to the left and you are looking towards the bowl of Sheffield city centre. The tall building in the centre is St Paul's Tower. It is an apartment block that was opened in 2010. The houses in the foreground are in the suburb of Greystones reaching down to Hunter's Bar.

That view over the city centre is forever changing - in different light and weather conditions and in different seasons. Phoebe loved looking out on the night of November 5th last year when fireworks burst in the sky in memory of Guy Fawkes and The Gunpowder Plot which was foiled in 1605. As you might imagine that plot was all tied up with religious differences and the future governance of England and Wales.

⦿

The word "view" is an odd word when you come to think about it. It can describe what we see when we look out in physical reality as evidenced above. But it can also be used in a more abstract sense - to describe attitudes and thoughts about particular matters.

Our son Ian has plenty of views about nutrition, healthy eating and veganism but he is not evangelical about it Last week he appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show on Channel 5 promoting his new book: "BOSH! More Plants". I blogged about it here. Yesterday, he and his work partner Henry featured in "The Yorkshire Post" newspaper - even appearing on the front of the Friday edition. See below...

Quiztime

The other day, a visitor reminded me that a new "Quiztime" post was long overdue so here we are. Today's quiz simply requires you to look at ten pictures of well-known women and then refer to the multiple choice options that follow, As usual, the answers will be given in the comments section. Good luck!

⦿

1.

(a) Melanija Knavs (b) Valentina Tereshkova 
(c) Anna Pavlova (d) Maria Sharapova

2.

(a) Rita Coolidge (b) Janis Ian

(c)  Shania Twain  (d) Janis Joplin

3.

(a) Princess Mary (b) Princess Jennifer

(c) Princess Meike (d) Princess Margaret

4.

(a) Coco Chanel  (b) Vivienne Westwood

(c) Estee Lauder  (d) Donatella Versace

5.

(a) Emily Maitlis  (b) Emily Dickinson

(c) Emily Bronte (d) Emily Deschanel

6.

(a) Indira Ghandi (b) Benazir Bhutto

(c) Mother Teresa  (d) Shabana Mahmood

7.

(a) Eva Braun  (b) Margaret Thatcher

(c)  Mata Hari (d) Mamie Eisenhower

8.

(a) Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (b) Marion Jones 

 (c) Florence Griffith Joyner (d) Gail Devers

9.

(a) Rosa Tralee  (b) Rosa Bush

(c) Rosa Parks (d) Rosa Wine

10.

(a) Wilma Flintstone (b) Lois Griffin

(c) Betty Boop (d) Betty Rubble

⦿

Okay. That's all folks! How did you do?

Zuma

I received a heart-warming tale in my comments box this morning. It was from a lady called Blue Mona. Although I have never had any previous contact with Mona, I was pleased to receive her uplifting message. It proved that even when life seems as shitty as it could possibly be, there is still hope and the possibility of a new beginning - just around the corner.

Personally, I do not require the services of the great Dr Zuma at this point in my life. However, it occurred to me that one or two troubled readers - out there on the murky edges of the blogosphere - might relish the assistance that Dr Zuma would undoubtedly bring to magically heal their relationship problems.

And so I have copied and pasted Mona's kind message below. My advice is to steel yourself, swallow hard and contact Dr Zuma using the e-mail address at the end. It could be the best thing you ever did. After all, look at what Dr Zuma did for Mona!

Hi My name is Mona. I just want to share my experience with the world on how I got my love back and saved my marriage… I was married for 7 years with 4 kids and we lived happily until things started getting ugly and we had fights and arguments almost every time… it got worse at a point that he filed for divorce… I tried my best to make him change his mind & stay with me cause I loved him with all my heart and didn’t want to lose him but everything just didn’t work out… he moved out of the house and still went ahead to file for divorce… I pleaded and tried everything but still nothing worked. The breakthrough came when someone introduced me to this wonderful, great spell caster Dr Zuma, who eventually helped me out… I have never been a fan of things like this but just decided to try reluctantly cause I was desperate and left with no choice… He did special prayers and cast a love spell on him. Within 24hours he called me and was sorry for all the emotional trauma he had cost me, he moved back to the house and we continue to live happily, the kids are happy too and we are expecting our fourth child… I have introduced him to a lot of couples with relationship problems across the world and they have had good news… Just thought I should share my experience cause I strongly believe someone out there needs it… You can contact him on spiritualherbalisthealing@gmail.com

And please remember that today is the first day of the rest of your life. You might regret not making that first step into a better, happier future. Final thought: I wonder if Dr Zuma charges for his services?

Rotherham

The Chapel of Our Lady, Rotherham

Rotherham is Sheffield's little brother. The two places are very close. The population of the borough of Rotherham is around 275,000 though the town itself is home to 110,000. It has an ancient heart as evidenced by Rotherham Bridge Chapel, shown above. This dates from the fifteenth century.

From the late eighteenth century, through to the start of the twentieth century, Rotherham became a significant industrial town with steelworks and factories transforming its original character. Later, there was painful decline and the town became a shadow of its former self. It didn't help that Yorkshire's biggest shopping centre - Meadowhall - was built on Rotherham's doorstep.

I travelled there on a "Supertram" tram-train from Sheffield Cathedral. It took me all the way to the Parkgate shopping centre - another reason why the centre of Rotherham feels like a neglected ghost town.

At Parkgate, there's a big Boots store - Boots being  this country's  biggest health and beauty products retailer. I popped in to buy some sunglasses for our trip to Egypt. Oh bejus! Some of those sunglasses cost between £100 and £200! I settled for a Boots home brand pair for £10 complete with a soft case. Nobody would know the difference.

Then it was on to the Cancer Research store I mentioned yesterday before making my way over footbridges that crossed the railway track, The River Don and The South Yorkshire Navigation Canal.

Soon I was in the suburb of Eastwood which is deprived and contains a large pocket of Muslim households with roots back in Pakistan and Bangladesh. This community was home to some very bad men who were guilty of the sexual abuse and exploitation of hundreds of vulnerable young girls and women between the 1980s and 2013. A number of those vile men are now locked up but there are probably others who still stalk the streets of Eastwood because the law never caught up with them. 

Crocuses in Clifton Park

I walked up Cottenham Road to Clifton Park which is spacious and well-kept in its maturity. There I paused at the cenotaph to pay my respects to Rotherham's war dead, noting the surname Jackson - my mother's maiden name. She was raised in the borough.

Then on to the sad "High Street" but beyond that the magnificence of Rotherham Minster - a Grade One listed church on the national register. It was built between 1480 and 1512 though the site had church buildings on it throughout the previous six hundred years.

I went inside hoping to view interior details but there was an event on. It was just about to begin and a hundred people were sitting in the wooden pews with a big screen in front of them. With a free coffee in hand, I decided to join them - just for the first half hour.

We watched a short Netflix documentary film called "The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone", set in Melbourne, Australia concerning a young trans woman's fight for the life she wanted to live. I take my hat off to her and to her supportive family. The film taught me some things and made me think better about trans people and trans rights.

Soon after that I was down at Rotherham Central Station ready for the tram-train home. It had been a very pleasant day out during which I conversed with half a dozen townsfolk. I will return before too long when hopefully I can peruse the minster's interior properly.

£8

Today, I did not carry the world on my shoulders. Instead, I carried it in a bag.

The world cost me just £8. I thought it was a bargain but I suppose in buying the world I have also purchased all of its troubles. From desertification to starvation and from exploitation to deforestation. Yes - now I come to think of it, maybe it wasn't such a bargain after all.

To clarify for Ellen D and Mary M and Bruce T and David and James and Bob and Jennifer in South Carolina and all the other Yankee-Doodle-Dandies who call by this humble green blog, £8 is the equivalent of $11 US. For Marcellous, Andrew, Elsie and Kylie on that big southern island that is apparently not an island, £8 is the equivalent of  $15.3 AUS. For Young Meike in continental Europe, £8 is the equivalent of 9.18 euros. For Lovely Monica in Sweden, £8 is about the same as 98 krona. For Canadian visitors like Arctic Monkey Red, Nurse Pixie, Debra ("She Who Squeaks")  and Jenny in Nova Scotia, £8 is like $14.8 CAN.

You might be wondering where I found the world.

It was in a battered cardboard box in the Cancer Research shop at Rotherham's Parkgate Shopping Centre.

When I spotted it, an elderly lady with silvery hair and silver-rimmed spectacles said to me, "Oh, I was looking at that but I have got no room for it in my house."

I told her that I was tempted but I had come to Rotherham to take a long walk and I did not really wish to be burdened by the world. I wanted my hands free.

"It won't weigh much," she advised. "A big, strong bloke like you. It'll not trouble you. Get a bag with handles!"

Holding up the world like Atlas in tales of yore, I asked the nice lady where she had been. She told me that the furthest she had been was to the Caribbean Sea on a cruise: "when my husband was alive". I showed her where it was. She remembered Barbados.

So I bought the world and a big bag with a suitable floral design to carry the world therein.

And as I left with the world peeping over the rim of the bag, I jested to her, "I am sure you are an agent for Cancer Research... persuading innocent visitors like me to spend our money here!"

She laughed and so did the ginger-bearded shop volunteer who completed the transaction. I suspect he was a man.

Then I set off on my Rotherham walk, now slightly encumbered by the world in a flowery bag. It was certainly not what I had been planning - but to tell you the truth, the inconvenience wasn't too bad. The nice old lady was right. The world with all of its troubles didn't weigh too much at all.

Loyalty

Loyalty is one of my character traits and I admire it in others. However, when the term is applied to supermarkets, it immediately loses most of its appeal.

I remember when Shirley and I were in Victoria, Canada back in 2014. We had a hotel room on the waterfront - complete with cooking facilities. One night, rather than going out to eat, we decided to purchase some provisions from a nearby, moderately-sized supermarket.

When we reached the checkout, it immediately became clear that the various prices we had spotted around the store were only available to customers with loyalty cards. Of course, being tourists, we did not have a loyalty card and so our bill more or less doubled. Thankfully, there was a nice Canadian lady behind us in the checkout queue and she  offered to buy our items using her loyalty card and then we could reimburse her at the ATM. It saved us a substantial amount of money.

In 2014, such loyalty schemes were not that advanced in England. However, during the past ten years the age of the loyalty card has truly arrived and without loyalty cards you effectively end up paying penalties.

My favoured budget supermarket was Lidl. I shopped there twice a week - spending thousands of pounds in the course of a decade. However, they brought in a loyalty scheme called "Lidl Plus" which has gradually increased its customer benefits. Unfortunately, no physical loyalty cards were ever issued. The only way you could access the scheme was through having the "Lidl Plus" app on a smartphone.

In spite of protests, letters and critical reviews, I was ostracized. Clearly, Lidl didn't give a fig about me - nor other genuinely loyal customers who do not possess smartphones. Yes folks - I am not the only one!

Finally, I decided that enough was enough and so a month ago I stopped shopping at Lidl. Nowadays, I instead go to Aldi which does not have a loyalty scheme and I very much hope that that remains the case in future months and years. 

After all, nobody likes to be a victim of discriminatory business practice. 

Ultimately, I think  it would be better if all loyalty schemes were scrapped. They are just crude devices to entrap customers so that they feel obliged to shop in particular stores. It's all about profit margins and customers are mere pawns in their loyalty games.

Sister

My friend - Mike

Okay, so what can I blog about tonight?

I know.

Owing to a change in management, Mick, Mike and I have not been quizzing at "The Hammer and Pincers" in recent weeks on Sunday nights. Instead, we have been going down to "The Robin Hood" at Millhouses. This involves the assistance of two spouses. Shirley takes us down there and Mike's wife - Jill brings us home. It's very kind of them.

Tonight we won the Sunday quiz at "The Robin Hood" and as per usual the three of us got to chat like old fish wives mending nets. We know each other so well and feel very comfortable in each other's company. There's no points scoring and no need for masks. You can say what you want without fear of judgement. Plus - we like each other.

We happened to be talking about care homes and dementia. I happened to ask Mike a question.

"Did your mum die in a care home Mike?"

It was like igniting a pile of firewood.

Mike revealed that on her deathbed, his mother's last words had been, "I'm sorry Michael".

She was an Irish nurse who left County Roscommon just after World War II. She arrived in North Manchester and soon fell in with Mike's father, George. Nature ran its course and quite quickly she was pregnant.

A few months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl who they named Susan. But George was not into the idea of becoming a father or getting married so Susan was put out for adoption.

Later, Mike's mother and father married and set up home together in the town of Oldham. There they raised three children - Mike and his two known sisters. He only learnt about Susan when he was in his mid-sixties.

He told his two other sisters about Susan following their mother's funeral back in Ireland. They had no idea.

The three siblings agreed that they would leave Susan in peace. There was no need to disturb her equilibrium with news about a family from which she had been excluded soon after birth.

However, one of the sisters - the annoying one - soon broke that agreement and off her own bat contacted Susan.

Susan replied that she was on her own in retirement, living a contented life and she had no wish at this late stage in her life to start playing happy families. It might prove too disturbing, too upsetting. Apparently, she lives over in Southport on the Lancashire coast.

And so eight years on from the day Mike's younger sister made contact with Susan, no further communication has happened.

But tonight I couldn't help feeling that the right thing to do would be to reach out to Susan with sensitivity, kindness and love - to bring her back into a family web from which she had been cast off. The woman will be approximately seventy eight years old now. Am I being too damned romantic to feel that it is never too late? Perhaps proper contact would help her to feel truly whole. What do you think?

Fulham

 

Amazing bookshop in Fulham (see below)

We have just got back from London after a quick thirty six hour break.

Sadly, Ian and his girlfriend Sarah broke up just before Christmas. She is the mother of our precious grandson - Zachary. They have sold the £1.2 million house they bought together and now Ian lives in a rental flat in the  Fulham area with Sarah occupying a nearby house that belongs to one of her brothers. He has been posted abroad on military service.

I have not asked many questions about why the split occurred. Maybe they do not really know themselves. Sometimes these things are about feelings and instincts - things you cannot entirely pin down. Both of them want to do their best for Zach and it seems that the parting has been pretty amicable. I have my ideas about what gradually happened to bring about the separation but no other people were involved.

As Zach was staying with Ian for the weekend we booked a hotel room at The Premier Inn near Putney Bridge. It was just a twenty minute walk from Ian's new place.

"Premier Inns" are a well-known hotel chain in Great Britain. They all boast that they are non-smoking establishments. I don't know about you but I detest any odour of stale cigarette smoke in a hotel room. As soon as I walked in Room 405, I could smell the fug - not gross but enough for me to notice.

On the way out, I stopped at reception to let them know. I said we didn't want to swap rooms but I would appreciate a canister of air freshener I could spray  to suppress the foul aroma. The woman on reception ignored my specific request and instead said she would send somebody up to the room.

When we returned to the room at 11pm on Friday night, the smoky smell was still there and the only difference was that a member of housekeeping had cracked open a window. This now ensures that The Great Yorkshire Pudding Hotel Inspector will be composing a scathing written review.

It was nice to see both Zach and Ian. When the little man was in bed on Friday night, we ordered in a scrumptious Vietnamese meal and this morning we met the two of them in Bishops Park where Zach fed the ducks and then we had a pleasant breakfast together in the park cafe.

Zach is really into his little toy cars and even takes them to bed with him. He loves to zoom them around Ian's wooden floors. In contrast, Margot likes to comfort her dollies, changing their nappies and patting their backs. None of the parents consciously encouraged this gender-typical behaviour. Somehow, it just grew.

⦿

Our hotel was near this amazing bookshop in Fulham. I have never been in a bookshop like it. If you love books, Hurlingham Books was a veritable Aladdin's cave. Inside, the secondhand books were stacked from floor to ceiling. I might be wrong but there seemed to be no method or reasoning to the disorganisation, no categories, no alphabetical order just thousands of books piled up on each other. Most of them had their prices written in pencil inside the front cover but many didn't. The little corridor that had formed between the stacks of books was so narrow that two people could not physically pass each other. For entirely successful book perusal I would have required stilts and a torch (American: flashlight).

Scheduled

On Tuesday, I took a walking detour into Sheffield's Botanical Gardens - mostly to see if any spring flowers had burst out of winter. Surprisingly, the carpets of colourful crocuses were still dormant and so only clumps of snowdrops and primroses were evident.

I also took a few close-up photos of the splendid "Pan: Spirit of the Woods" statue that stands in the rose garden area. By the way, the middle picture is not my own. I just inserted it so that you would have some idea of what the statue as a whole looks like.

Below, snowdrops gather around a memorial tree planted in 1993 in memory of  Sheffield resident, William Sutton. Below that some primroses I spotted.

Though I know that I have previously shared pictures of the magnificent Victorian glasshouse designed by Joseph Paxton, here's another one....

Soon after this I walked down Brocco Bank to Endcliffe Park where I took a picture of  The Endcliffe Park Toad by Jason Thomson. It was installed in December 2024 and is made from steel  - replacing an earlier version that was carved from dead wood. Hopefully, the new one will last a lot longer...

Vine

Our Ian and his "BOSH!" mate Henry were on the telly again today. Actually, it has been  quite a while since they were last on. Today they were guests on "The Jeremy Vine Show" on Channel 5. During the live screening of this morning chat show programme, the news broke that "Prince" Andrew had been arrested by police on the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

Fortunately, news of that arrest did not impinge on the "BOSH!" slot. Jeremy Vine was a nice host. He asked thoughtful questions and made Ian and Henry feel comfortable. It was a far cry from the time they were interviewed by self-obsessed Piers Morgan who seemed to be only interested in his own voice. Not the best trait for an effective TV host.

Today, not only did Ian and Henry get to talk about their new book but they also got to play their part in discussing interesting newspaper articles printed this very morning.

"More Plants" is their eighth book. It was published a week ago and as the title suggests it simply shows yet more ways of creating great, tasty vegan meals. 

Ian and Henry have been on their vegan mission for eleven years now. It has been quite a journey. They even have their own Wikipedia page. Go here. Wikipedia fails to mention that they now have products in big "Tesco" supermarkets across the country - in both chilled and freezer sections.

Naturally, Shirley and I are immensely proud of what Ian has done in the last decade. We are heading down to London to see him and our grandson little Zachary tomorrow morning. Consequently, Friday's blogpost will be "scheduled" and that will also be its title.

Writing

 

Phoebe is asleep upstairs. She is five years and one month old. All Sheffield schools are currently on their half term holidays.

Late this afternoon, she showed keen interest in what Grandma was doing on her laptop. In her capacity as secretary of the local Women's Institute, Grandma was writing up some minutes. Phoebe began to help and under close supervision did a line or two of typing.

I invited her into the study to practise her growing writing skills on my desktop computer. I brought up a fresh "Word" page and we agreed that she would make a short Christmas wishlist.

Though I guided her closely, I did not actually touch the keyboard. It was all her own work. This was the very first piece of writing that she has ever done with the aid of a computer keyboard.

When it was done, I turned our printer on and explained to her what she needed to do to create a print off of her work.

Very soon the page was churned out and I showed it to her. With wide eyes, she asked, "How did it do that?" It was a moment of revelation.

As writers, we all have to start somewhere and it seemed to me that those few lines will be the first of thousands to come during the course of her life. It's a significant step forward from slowly writing her own name with a pencil.

The other day I was quite surprised when she used the words "camouflage" and "nocturnal" perfectly correctly. Again her little face lit up when I praised her about this.

An hour ago, I read her a bedtime story as she settled down for the night. It was, "There's No Such Thing As Monsters" by Steve Smallman and Caroline Pedler. I don't know about you but I am not totally sure about the premise of that story. However, at five years and one month old you don't need to learn about the real monsters of present times and history. Not yet anyway. That can wait.

Jesse

"Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up" - Jesse Jackson

⦿

Jesse Jackson shared my birthday so, ridiculously perhaps, I felt something of a bond with him. He knew Martin Luther King Junior well and carried on his work after the great man's assassination. It would have been easier for Jesse Jackson to live a quiet life, away from the media and the hurly burly of current affairs and politics but he chose to stand up and be counted. All his adult life, he fought the good fight in the name of justice, freedom and equality.

If you want to know more details about his life, please go to his Wikipedia page.

Straight after the American presidential election in November 2016, Jesse Jackson wrote an article for "The Guardian" newspaper. Much of what he said was prescient:-

"Based on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the Republican party platform, the social, racial and economic progress America has made over recent decades is in danger: gender equality, the fight for a living wage, affordable healthcare, the struggle for sensible gun control laws, immigration reform and the regeneration of urban communities.

We can only hope he will not govern the way he campaigned – a steady diet of retrograde fantasies and divisive talk about taking the country back. Back to where? When Jim Crow and American apartheid ruled the land; when women could not vote or serve on juries?

I have known Trump for years and, until this bruising campaign, always thought him a decent man. We had our political differences, but I was surprised he turned so quickly and sharply to the right in his quest for power. It saddened and alarmed me that his words resonated so deeply with the racist right that the Ku Klux Klan’s leading newspaper endorsed him."

Although our American cousins are all familiar with the historic  term, "Jim Crow", European and Australian visitors may be puzzled by it so let me explain...

Jim Crow refers to a legalized system of racial apartheid and segregation in the Southern United States from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s. These state and local laws enforced the separation of black and white people in public spaces, including schools, transportation, and restaurants, effectively ensuring a second-class status for African Americans. The term stems from a nineteenth century minstrel character who denigrated black Americans for the amusement of largely white audiences.

Jesse would have been the first to admit that he was imperfect but compared with most public figures, he lived a good life and sought to do what was righteous on behalf of his fellow human beings - not just in America but around the world.

Reflections

At Dale Dyke Reservoir on Saturday, the surface of the water was unusually still. This, along with the sharpness of the light, ensured that any reflections were mirror-like and true. I took several photos.

Above, where small trees have been inundated by a surfeit of water from the surrounding hills, it is hard to see where the trees meet their reflections. Although I took the picture, I also struggle to differentiate between the two. Even when enlarged to full capacity, the image remains a visual brainteaser.

Reflections... Isn't the English language itself a puzzle? We think of reflections in mirrors or water surfaces but of course  there are other kinds of reflection, including: "careful thought about something " which mostly happens within the secret confines of our brains.

Humans devote a lot of time to reflection, mulling things over - sometimes wondering how we might have spoken or acted differently. Reflection often happens upon the pillow at night or in the morning when we wake. It accompanies walks and runs and journeys and unless we are wholly brutish, reflection is impossible to dodge.

I  suppose that I am not unusual in that I tend to reflect much more  upon my mistakes and my failings than upon my achievements and successes. When Edith Piaf sang, "Non, je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing) she was totally out of synch with humanity in  general. To regret nothing is in truth just a wistful notion, a pipe-dream.

Though we cannot change the past, we can certainly kick ourselves for things that we said or did and wish that we could press a rewind button as on an old videotape player. The important thing is not to allow those self-recriminations to overwhelm us, obscuring  our victories and our better traits.

With these thoughts, I find myself reflecting once again. To be alive is a ceaseless puzzle, like the picture at the top of this blogpost.

Bulls

 

Let me introduce you to Tony and Joy Bull.  Last week they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary - seventy five years of wedlock and not a cross word between them  They have lived all their lives in North Yorkshire but now their place of residence is a care home for the elderly . Tony is 95 and Joy is 94.

I know all of this because they appeared in  a feelgood item on "BBC Look North" - our regional television news programme. Local news services like to cover that kind of story don't they?

Of course the couple were asked about  the recipe for a long and lasting marriage. Tony said, "Two people's chemistry is different everywhere but most of all you've got to be totally unselfish, give and take. It worked for us."

And here we come to the point of this blogpost. Shirley and I both laughed out loud when Tony, looking adoringly at his wife, added, "There's only one thing that can compare with a pedigree, prize-winning Hereford bull and that's a well-dressed woman!"

What a co-incidence that Tony should make such a politically incorrect remark when his surname is Bull!

My apologies to any well-dressed women readers who feel offended both by this blogpost and by Tony's declaration. After all there are other things that can compare favourably with a healthy Hereford bull such as a prizewinning Aberdeen Angus bull or the overall winner at the Cruft's dog show in 2025 - a four year old  Italian whippet called Miuccia.

And as for well-dressed women, maybe Tony had Melania Trump in mind rather than his wife Joy who never said anything to camera because dementia is eating away at who she  once was.

Walk

The promised Saturday weather came true. Blue skies and sunshine with the February air as clear as crystal. But where should I walk to take advantage of such a day?

I went somewhere I had not been in a good, long while - Dale Dyke Reservoir to the north west of the city. It takes about twenty minutes to drive out there. The last three miles are narrow lanes where meeting vehicles need to slow right down to get past each other.

The unremarkable reservoir sits peacefully in the cleft of a valley but once its name was infamous across the kingdom.

Not long after its initial construction and following heavy rains, the massive earth and clay dam sprang a leak which turned into a cleft that was soon split apart by the weight of water behind it. It is estimated that 700 million gallons of water were released. I previously blogged about this terrible event  back in 2010. Go here.

The torrent  thundered to the nearby village of Low Bradfield before surging down The Loxley Valley towards Hillsborough and The Wicker in Sheffield city centre. Along the way, 600 homes were destroyed, fifteen bridges and several work places. More than 240 people were killed, many through drowning.

The Great Sheffield Flood was the biggest civilian disaster of the Victorian period in Great Britain. It occurred on the night of March 11th 1864. In its aftermath, many changes to reservoir and dam construction occurred. Important lessons had been learnt.

Nowadays, The Sheffield Flood is a mere footnote in history and even within this city, many Sheffielders have never heard of the disaster. That unremembering simply adds to the tragedy.

Victorian pump house close to Dale Dyke Reservoir

Today, with boots on, I circled Dale Dyke Reservoir. In places the perimeter path was muddy as hell and I had to pick my way carefully through those sections. However, it was a delight to walk beneath a blue sky once again.

Lots of other people were out and about, taking advantage of a diamond day after what has seemed like weeks of gloomy skies. They are set to return in the week ahead but today we were reminded that there can be light and colour and sunshine - combining to make a special healing remedy for needy humans.

A view of Boots Folly above Strines Reservoir

Pissed

It was late one Saturday night. We had just returned to our red cabin deep in the woods of Ohio, in the countryside east of Cleveland, beyond Shaker Heights.

"God, I'm pissed!" I announced as I crawled into my bed.

Chris said nothing as he also hit the hay.

I had arrived at the summer camp just two days before. Somehow Chris and I had requisitioned a cabin all to ourselves, even though there would have been room for two other male counsellors.

We had been to "Skip & Ray's" bar by Route 87 - just a mile away and there we had consumed a couple of large glass pitchers of blonde American beer. That is why I was drunk or as English people will commonly say - "pissed". It doesn't mean that we are angry about anything. It just means we are inebriated.

If we are annoyed, irritated or angry about something we often  describe that state as being "pissed off". Adding the "off" is key to the changed meaning.

In the early summer of 1976, I had no idea that our colonial cousins in the USA used the term "pissed" differently. At some point during the week that followed, Chris and I laughed when we realised our linguistic misunderstanding.

Previously, I alluded to this same tale when I wrote a bunch of memoir blogposts concerning the two summers I spent as a camp counsellor in Ohio. Go here. Many of you will have never read that sequence.

Let me move on to the business of being "pissed off". I am writing the day after Mad Trump announced that he would be reversing Obama-era scientific rulings that underpin all federal actions on curbing planet-warming gases.

This is utterly crazy and flies in the face of solid scientific findings. It gives other hesitant governments the green light to rip up climate change legislation and carry on as ignorantly as before we truly realised the damage that mankind had done to this beautiful planet by burning fossil fuels. Yes I am definitely pissed off about this latest move by Orange Ignoramus but I guess it may have been just another card played as a way of deflecting continuing interest in  what we should start calling the Trump-Epstein Files. His farty name appears in those files over a million times.

As I am reflecting on the verb "to piss", I wish to report that it is still pissing it down here in South Yorkshire (i.e. it's raining) but tomorrow the weather people are predicting a day of blessed relief between meteorological systems. The sun will shine down upon St Valentine's Day and all will be well with the world as the intrepid Yorkshire Pudding walks out somewhere...anywhere to see Earth's colours revealed once more...

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain" - William Shakespeare 

"Venus and Adonis" (1593)