Youlgreave

 Yesterday I headed off to the Derbyshire village of Youlgreave under an early summer sky. There I parked up ahead of a pleasant country walk. No more than two hours long.

It took me out of the village along an old track that led to green meadows where sheep and cows grazed. The grass was lush and sweet. 

A pair of women with a dog had just passed through the field I was approaching and the young cows within it had become skittish. I arced  around them but as I headed for a squeeze stile through the boundary wall, they moved towards me as one. I turned to yell at them, waving my arms about like a windmill and that made them visibly hesitate but it was only a brief delay.

I guess they thought I was a farmer with salt or food supplements to dish out. It was  a relief to get into the next field where another herd was waiting.

After passing through a large  eighteenth century farm complex called Meadow Place Grange, I descended to Lathkill Dale - a beautiful valley that bisects the landscape and contains the very lucid River Lathkill. I walked beside it for half a mile before climbing up the opposite side of the valley.

Later, back in Youlgreave, I entered All Saints - the parish church. I photographed the stone carving of a pilgrim set in the north wall. It was created in the middle of the twelfth century - around 1150. Approaching the altar and between the choir stalls there is the alabaster tomb of a local landowner who was killed during an argument in 1488. He was Thomas Cockayne. I would suggest that his tomb must  get in the way of many church activities. It is very unusual to find a chancel obstructed in this way.

Rewrite

Theresa May
(With apologies to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark)

Theresa May, you made the right decision yesterday
We heard your message on the radio, you failed completely so you're going to go
Those prayers we prayed, we were sure that they'd come true someday
Uh huh Theresa May, it's great that you are going away

It's 8:15, that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio, you failed completely so you're going to go

Theresa May, is mother proud of little girl today
Uh huh, these cheers we raise, they're never ever gonna fade away

Theresa May, you made the right decision yesterday
We heard your message on the radio, you failed completely so you're going to go
Those prayers we prayed, we were sure that they'd come true someday
Uh huh Theresa May, it's great that you are going away

It's 8:15, that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio, you failed completely so you're going to go

Confrontation

I feel okay today but sixteen unbroken hours in a polling station can take the wind out of one's sails.

In the middle of the afternoon a familiar woman appeared in the church hall. I recognised her from the Oxfam shop. She is about fifty with long grey-blonde hair. Slender and combative Miss James carries a long stick to guide her for she is partially-sighted.

Down at Oxfam where she likes to peruse the book shelves while claiming she is totally blind, I remember once offering to assist her. She turned on me like a she-wolf complaining about the shop's lighting. "Who ordered these lights? They're terrible! I'm blind. Without good light I can't see a thing! No! No! Get away from me. I don't need your help!"

She is very cantankerous. While most of us like to get through our days without confrontation or unpleasantness, Miss James seems to actively seek these things so when she appeared at our polling station my heart sank a little.

It turns out that she knew very well that ours was not her assigned polling station. In fact, she had just come from her own polling station a few streets away following a typical argument in which she had ended up ripping a ballot paper to pieces in front of the poll clerks. They must have wondered what had hit them.

In our church hall she was all sweetness and light as she sought clarification on the election process. She didn't blow up too much when I said I knew she was partially sighted. "No I am not! I am registered blind. Can I read that booklet myself?"

She was just having a breather, recouping her energy before returning to her own polling station to fire more broadsides at officials who surely hoped they had seen the last of her. We found all of this out from the polls inspector who has to rove around the different polling stations checking that everything is flowing smoothly.

I guess Miss James fell asleep happily last night as she recollected her various fights at the post office, the green grocer's, on the bus, at the charity shop and in the  polling station. "Ahhh! Another most satisfactory day!" she may have sighed as she looked forward to more confrontations on Friday.

Today

Today is cancelled. It's just gone midnight and I am away to bed but I will be up again at 5.45am ready to drive down to my allocated polling station. I will be there until 10.15pm working as a poll clerk at the European Union Parliamentary Election.

Britain voted to leave The European Union in June 2016 but we still haven't left and so the country is obliged to participate in these elections. The whole thing is an utter mess and as time goes on one wonders where our confused politics will lead and how we can ever return to a state of political normalcy. 

The thing seems broken and who can possibly fix it? The hapless Theresa May seems destined to resign in the next few days and her right-hand woman - Andrea Leadsom has already resigned as Leader of the House of Commons. Perhaps she intends to go for the top job but she is as unimpressive as the other candidates plotting leadership bids. In my opinion, the worst of these is the bumbling Boris Johnson - currently the bookies' favourite. The guy is a clown and a liar to boot. He was the worst Foreign Secretary ever to occupy that high office.

Brexit is like a death wish. We should never have been asked the simplistic Leave/Remain question in the first place. Ignorant people now grumble: "Just get on with it" or "We voted leave so we should leave". They seem to disregard the complicated ramifications of this misguided decision and fail to appreciate the benefits of European unity,

And so today, still in Europe, we vote for candidates and parties who may never take up their seats in Brussels or Strasbourg. You couldn't make this up. I will intersperse the hours at the polling station with cheese and tomato sandwiches, bananas, mugs of tea and biscuits as voters drift in to put their crosses in the various meaningless boxes. It's called Democracy.

Eventide

I baked fish pies - served with french beans and buttered carrot batons. We had dinner early and then I set off in the car (aka "Clint") - heading off for an evening walk in gorgeous May sunshine.

At the road junction, fifty yards from our house there had been a road accident. A Volkswagen car was on its roof and people were standing around looking puzzled. The police and ambulance hadn't even appeared yet. 

The situation caused unexpected delay and I was late arriving at my starting point on the Baslow road  well south of Sheffield by Big Moor.  The sun was now lower in the sky than I had anticipated.

I descended to the valley of Millthorpe Brook along an old cart track known as Car Road. In an adjacent bluebell glade I disturbed a deer. It bounded off before I could reveal my camera and switch it on. I have missed some of the best pictures that way.

Part of the herd

At Bank Green, I needed to cut across some green meadows along a little used public footpath. There was a small herd of dark brown cows there. I think the breed may have been Red Poll. They looked at me with great suspicion as if perhaps I might have been sent  by the local abattoir. I noticed a group of adolescent calves amongst them and a certain tension in the herd. They were starting to panic. Then a muscular young bull arrived through a gap in the hedgerow and it was as if he was snorting, "What the hell is going on?"

No reply was necessary even though I can talk bull quite fluently. I decided it was wiser to backtrack then find a different way to descend to Millthorpe Brook. I noticed sunlight illuminating trees above the valley while below bluebells were already bathed in shadow waiting for night to fall (see the top picture).

Round in a circle and then the long slog back up Car Road until I was once again in evening sunlight looking out over the wide expanse of Big Moor. 

It was half past eight and time to hurry home ready for the pub quiz at "The Hammer and Pincers" with the two Michaels. By the way, we won one of the main prizes. Our brains still retain some useful information such as the fact that "Goldfinger" is not only the title of a James Bond film, but the name of a banana too.

Car Road heading to Bank Green

Recording

"This call will be recorded for quality and training purposes"... "This call may be recorded for monitoring purposes"...

You hear such statements frequently when entering telephone conversations with businesses or even government departments. Sometimes the subject matter of those conversations will be very innocuous and yet still we receive that recording advice...or is it a warning?

It never used to happen. Before effective recording technology came along you just had two way conversations. Nobody was recording them.

I sometimes wonder where all these recordings are kept and who exactly accesses them. Though I have never tried it myself, I wonder what the response might be if we phoned companies back and requested copies of the recordings or said, "Can you just play back the bit where I was talking about my insurance claim?"

How long do they keep the recordings? Are they sometimes bluffing when they say that the call will be recorded? Is it all just some kind of power game in which the customer or client is made to feel self-conscious, small and somehow defused?

Once or twice when I have been irritated or badly served by a company, I have retorted, "Aye and I want to warn you that I am also recording you for monitoring purposes!"

To me all this one-sided recording of innocent citizens is slightly sinister. They don't even ask. "Would you mind if we recorded this telephone call?" I don't think it has anything to do with "training" or "quality" - it's all about gathering evidence that might possibly be used against the caller in the event of a dispute.

Rant over.

Winners

A week ago, Ian and Henry were on their way to The British Book Awards annual ceremony at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Their first book had been nominated in the Non-Fiction Lifestyle category.

They hired tuxedos and went along more in hope than expectation... but damn me - they won it! And here they are being interviewed straight after the ceremony for The British Booksellers' website:-

That happy evening, "Bosh!" also won a second award for their marketing campaign.

"The British Book Awards" are undoubtedly this country's top annual book awards and I cannot tell you just how proud and delighted I am with Ian's continuing success. The "Bosh!" story goes on.