Population

Once the island of Britain was heavily forested. No wonder that we have inherited pagan tales of "green men" like Robin Hood who lived deep in the woods. Look at just about any British landscape today and it's hard to imagine that once those hills and valleys were wooded. Wisps of smoke appeared above the canopy, rising from clearings where villagers were living cheek by jowl with the forest creatures. Simply surviving from one year to the next. Paths and rough tracks wove their way to other settlements and it was upon these tiresome lines of communication that all news travelled.

In 1066 when the empire-building Normans arrived at Hastings there were an estimated 1,100,000 English people. That's about the number of people who currently live in the city of Birmingham alone. Now there are over fifty million of us. Fifty times more than William the Conqueror "conquered"! Imagine that. Apart from anything else this population explosion has required the building of millions of extra homes and the development of food production methods that would have astounded our ancestors.

As you know, I live in the city of Sheffield. Currently it's population is 535,500 but back in 1801 it was only 60,095 more than an eightfold increase in just over two hundred years! And if we look across the pond at the USA we see that in 1790 their population was just 3.9 million but by 1890 it had risen to 62.9 million and by 2000 - 281.4 million. What an amazing increase! So just what have those Americans been up to between their burgers, milkshakes and baseball games I wonder?

On to the planet as a whole. Demographic experts judge that in 1798 there were less than one billion people living on Earth. Now in 2010 the figure is estimated to be seven billion! A sevenfold increase in two centuries. That's an awful lot of people all needing food, water, shelter and reality TV programmes. And there seems to be no cessation - the numbers just keep getting bigger. When our friend Mr Brague was born, the population of the USA was literally half of what it is today.

During my brief research for this post I came across several websites that consider this question - "What if the world were only one hundred people?" Some fascinating figures emerge. For example:-

61 would be Asian, 12 European and 13 African - only 5 would be North American

17 would speak Chinese as a first language but only 8 English

76 would have electricity in their homes but 24 would not

Only 1 would own a computer so 99 would not

34 would have mobile phones so 66 would not

82 would be literate but 18 would be unable to read and write

31 would claim to be Christian, 21 Muslim and 16 would declare no religion at all

Statistics! Statistics! Damned lies and statistics! If I'm hoping you'll draw anything from this post it's to imagine a world where there were far fewer people, living much more harmoniously with Nature. Population growth was slight - even sometimes reducing as at the time of The Black Death in Europe. The rivers and seas must have teemed with fishes. Tigers would have been plentiful in the jungles of Asia and buffalo would have roamed the plains of America in herds as uncountable and endless as the wildebeest of Africa. Regarding population growth, in modern times, it has seemed like a snowball enlarging as it rolls down the hill and nothing will stop it? The question mark is deliberate.

Pakistan

Torrential monsoon rains. The Indus and its tributaries overflowing. Dams bursting. Crops washed away. Homes washed away. Animals washed away. People washed away. At least 1700 citizens are already known to have died. Fourteen million people's lives are suffering different degrees of disruption. Electricity supplies interrupted and above all, very ironically, amidst all that mud-coloured flood water, no clean water for drinking or washing. Water borne diseases like cholera are already appearing, ready to inflate the casualty figures exponentially. Poor Pakistan. What a tragedy! Click on the picture below if you're British and you feel like donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee Pakistan Floods Appeal. I am sure all other western countries are raising money in support of our fellow earthlings in Pakistan. It's the least we can do.

Background

Most of us rather like it when something unexpected happens during a live TV broadcast. There's surely a little anarchy in everyone. Don't we rather enjoy those idiots in the background jumping up and down, waving at the camera or pulling silly faces? Often their antics are in direct contrast to the serious content of the broadcast.

I don't know if you've seen the clip below shown on the BBC lunchtime news last year when an American tourist from Canton, Georgia tripped during his walking tour of the City of Westminster. Passers-by helped this confused old gentleman to his feet and sat him on a wall. They asked him what his name was but at first all he could remember was that it rhymed with "vague". Fortunately, he recovered quickly and returned to his homeland with a handsome tale to tell.

WARNING The embedding of this video clip required advanced computer skills. Such an operation should not be attempted by novices as any wrong move could result in hard-drive meltdown and the end of the western world as we know it.

Symphony

On Yorkshire Day, I referred to Benjamin Till's wonderful "A Symphony for Yorkshire". In the days since then, the accompanying film has been shown in its entirety on BBC Yorkshire. Now it's available on YouTube. Though I offered you a snippet last Sunday you can now see the whole thing - around twenty minutes. The participants are shown in a range of Yorkshire settings - some famous and some rather ordinary. I really do think that this work captures something of the spirit of this amazing county.

My one and only criticism is that cultures of Asian descent could have been celebrated more obviously in the piece. People with Asian heritage form a sizeable population group within our cities and towns - especially in Bradford, Huddersfield and Leeds where their contribution to the rich tapestry of the county's cultural life has been remarkable. In an email from Benjamin Till to yours truly, he accepted that this was an unfortunate omission - simply because no suitable Asian musical groups responded to the initial appeals. Personally, I think he should have been rather more proactive in ensuring Asian ingredients to enhance the final mixture.

Nonetheless, it's still brilliant:-

Lamentation

A Gathering

We were all there

Me and Shirley

Michael Neylon and Mick

Kay Vaughan from the pub with her hazelwood stick

Anthony Howley who secured the plot

And that fiddler from Doolin

Whose name I forgot

Derek and Gloria, Mary and John

The barman from Nagles - the miserable one.

And Aidan Malone - a smashing young lad

His mother Breda and Patrick his dad

Simon and Frances and the crowd from Lahinch

Donal, Young Connor and Margaret Lynch

A couple from Belfast who drove through the night

And old friends from Dublin who set off at first light

Kevin stone-faced in black suit and tie

Michael dressed likewise, too shocked to cry

Jo was wept out

Her face numbed by grief

The pain unassuaged

By religious belief

Father Ned Crosby led the applause

And the ceilidh band played

(Kilfenora of course)

Katie's fingers danced on her flute

With six fiddlers' bowing and we listeners mute

Clustering round that old hawthorn tree

Bent east by storms formed far out at sea

We were all there

Young and old

The people you knew

Yes, all were gathered

But where pray were you?

Ruined cottage in Kilfenora

Footnote: I wrote this on what would have been Paul's sixty third birthday - in place of the cards I sent each year.

Poem

Of Memory

Seen as if through morning mists

Across marshes

We gild our lilies.

Is that how it was?

A tale of endless summer days

Edited so expertly.

On the cutting room floor

In swirling cellulose

Lie discarded scenes

And nameless faces

Lines once said

But since unheard.

Perhaps the truth is tangled there

Like ticker-tape
After the parade.

Long ago

I carved my name on a sapling

But healing bark and moss

And seasons churning

Have obscured the lines

Till I'm no longer sure

I gouged it.

And I think to myself...

Is that how it was?

Darkest

Pond in Lees Hall Wood

This past year I have made several forays into what you might call darkest Sheffield. I love to walk when the weather is good. There's so much to behold if you just keep your eyes open - even in a big sprawling northern city like this one.

Here's a fact about Sheffield. It can boast more parkland than any other city in Britain apart from London which is of course sixteen times bigger than the Steel City.

Today I was exploring Gleadless Valley. I parked up and set off with a rudimentary map I had culled from the Ordnance Survey website. I walked for nigh on two hours without crossing a road and this was well within the city boundaries with high rise flats and council estates close by. Up until the mid sixties there was a farm here - a remnant of earlier times with farm tracks and a big stone farmhouse. Now you'd have to be an archaeologist to read the landscape properly but I found stone gateposts in the woods and a pond, close to the remains of what was once the farm's orchard.

The surrounding area tends towards poverty in terms of family income and much of the housing belongs to the local authority. Sheffield is a very divided city in socio-economic terms and Gleadless Valley is like a reservation for the "have nots".

Along the path came a tattooed couple with four kids in tow. Inappropriately for such a ramble, I noticed the mother was wearing high heels. How sweet - I thought - a working class family out for a nature walk. "Ey up bud!" grinned the young father as I passed him. Moments before, his six or seven year old son had emerged excitedly from the nearby brook with a baby frog in his palm. The mother said "Put it back Ethan!"

Ethan was clearly reluctant to obey. Perhaps this was the very first time he had ever held a frog. After I had passed, climbing up the banking to the unexpected wild open space beyond, I heard the young father's anger increasing till he was yelling - "I've telled thee Ethan! Put the f***ing frog back!" I thought - hey if that had been me - I'd like to think I'd have said something like "Look at the colours on his back. Aren't they wonderful? His mum and dad are probably waiting for him Ethan . Let me help you to put him back in the brook. Now where did you find him? Good boy!" Though of course we'd never have picked a stupid name like Ethan. Poor lad.

Later I drove into Sheffield's true "heart of darkness" - The Manor - which in comparison makes Gleadless look like Beverly Hills. As I may have said before - once this was a vast forested deer park with a lodge in the middle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for fourteen years. How bizarre that in the twentieth century it became a sprawling low-cost housing estate with burnt out cars, teenage mums and poverty hanging in the air like a veritable fug of cigarette smoke. In the late seventies/early eighties I would sometimes drive through The Manor on a Monday morning and see a line of welfare claimants already queuing for their dues outside the now derelict post office.

View from Manor Wood to City Road Cemetery