Babysitting

Yesterday, Shirley and I were on babysitting duty. Our precious charge was the beloved granddaughter, Princess Phoebe. Her mother and father were attending the wedding of two friends they have known for more than twenty years.

Because of COVID, this wedding had been postponed three times. It was first meant to happen at Easter 2020 in Seville, Spain - a place much beloved by the bride and groom. They kept trying to reschedule the wedding as flights and hotels were booked and then cancelled. What was supposed to be a joyous event when first conceived turned into something of a painful saga.

In the end, the couple were married here in Sheffield. The ceremony took place in the old Abbeydale Picture House before coaches took the guests to Kelham Island  and a wedding feast with dancing in a repurposed industrial building called The Mowbray. At last Kira and Andy were married and the angst of the past two years could be relegated to memory. I guess that many weddings have been disrupted in this way by the damned coronavirus.

Anyway, back to the babysitting... Our duties commenced at midday and ended at one o'clock this morning. Yes, that's right - thirteen hours. This was not made any easier by the fact that Phoebe still needs mother's milk. Okay she's getting into solid foods now but nothing is better than mum's milk. By the way, she refuses to have expressed milk or formula milk - only human milk from two particular flesh-coloured receptacles will do. Consequently, before bedtime, we did a milk run to The Mowbray where mama was waiting with the heavenly liquid.

Afterwards, I went on to "The Hammer and Pincers" to participate in the Sunday quiz. before returning at ten thirty for the final babysitting stint. - allowing Shirley to go home at that point.

Princess Phoebe woke up just before midnight and was at first inconsolable but Grandpa calmed her after ten minutes and together we watched passing traffic on the road outside  as I sang:-

Half a pound of tuppenny rice

Half a pound of treacle

That's the way the money goes

Pop goes the weasel

When mama and papa returned as drunk as nuns in  an Ibizan nightclub, Princess Phoebe was under Grandpa's magical spell - calm and smiley but well ready for another milky top up. By the way, Little Phoebe is going to Canada on Thursday afternoon and in the picture at the top she is wearing her new bobble hat - bought specially for the two week trip. We are going to miss that little girl.

Kominsky

Last night I finished watching "The Kominsky Method" courtesy of Netflix. It consists of twenty two half hour episodes. I  saw all of them in seven days. The series was recommended to me by my friend Mike.

It chiefly revolves around a Los Angeles stage school where has-been actor Sandy Kominsky puts his coaching "method" into practice. He is played by Michael Douglas who is not an actor I had previously registered much interest in. He kind of passed me by.

"The Kominsky Method" is very nicely produced and it is imbued with quirky often subtle humour. The writing is solid and intelligent and there is a  laid back quality to the entire tapestry. 

There's a refreshing and total  absence of guns, killings and screeching car chases. Instead the drama focuses upon relationships, ambitions, failures and the differences between people. Michael Douglas is a revelation - playing his part with dry self-deprecation and humanity.

The well-known film criticism website "Rotten Tomatoes" said this of the show: "Full of humor and heart, The Kominsky Method paints a surprisingly poignant  portrait of life and aging, elevated by two top-notch performances by acting legends Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas.."

Of course people's tastes differ  but I very much enjoyed "The Kominsky Method". It filled eleven hours of my life very happily. Perhaps you have already seen it but if you haven't and you have access to "Netflix", I suggest that you give it a try some time.

October

October 2011 - Above Flash Edge

October is my birth month so every year it feels like coming home. The harvest is in and apples are still falling. You can sometimes hear them thump upon the earth. Unpicked brambles are mouldering on their briars. Red tractors drag harrows over the undulations of farmland. Days are shared equally between darkness and light. Migratory birds have departed or are in the process of coming back. Clouds scud to or from the north east. Summer is but a phantasm now - a sweet lament while winter growls like a famished creature, waiting for signals of weakness, ready to strike.

The tenth month is meant for reflection, tinged with sadness and yet it might be unspeakably beautiful too with shafts of burnished light gilding foliage that dies gloriously in shades of amber, russet and scarlet. Sometimes there's the aroma of burning - like faraway funeral pyres -  invisible wood smoke transported upon a buffeting wind. And forty years ago my wife married me in this month at Owston Ferry and yes, it does seem like yesterday.

Welcome to October.

October 2014 - Cleethorpes

Lound

Idle Valley Nature Reserve

I like to get at least one long walk in every week. After all, walking is pretty much the only exercise I get these days but fortunately I love it. Not much can beat the feeling of sheer fatigue after a long walk when you can slake your thirst with cold water and check over your map to see how many miles you have covered.

Today I parked Clint in the village of Lound in Nottinghamshire - just north of Retford. East of the village there are several lakes and ponds that are a remnant of sand and gravel quarrying in days gone by. Mother Nature has done her best to reclaim this landscape and nowadays it is a haven for wild birds. Two miles beyond the nature reserve you reach a narrow river that was navigable in medieval times. It is called The River Idle.

The pub and a Royal Mail van in Lound

I walked by the meandering river for a further mile and a half before crossing a convenient foot bridge that led me to the north of the watery world I had just traversed. At a bench with a view, I met a genial gentleman called  Michael from Misterton. Neatly dressed in "Craghoppers" outdoor gear and with a mop of silver hair, he was clutching a pair of binoculars though he wasn't obsessive about ornithology. He told me that his wife died from COVID last year and I sensed that he wanted to talk so I gave him some time. There was a lightness about his character that I liked though we exchanged some serious thoughts about the environment.

Where I met Michael

Leaving Michael, I tramped to remote Wildgoose Farm  and then headed for Blaco Hill before arcing back across farmland and along quiet lanes to Lound.

It was a lovely day but with a little autumnal chill in the air. Most fields that needed harvesting have been attended to though there were still some swathes of maize and carrots holding on till October. Once reconnected with Clint, we travelled home via Bawtry, Tickhill and Maltby. 

The radio news was of The Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton - specifically the keynote speech of Sir Keir Starmer, the party's relatively new leader. I thought he came across well. He said that his late father had been a toolmaker and added there was a sense in which our current prime minister's father had also been a toolmaker! That made me laugh.

Maize near Lound

Canute

Yorkshireman Humphrey Smith is a wealthy brewer. Nobody knows quite how rich he is but he could easily be a billionaire. Surprisingly, there are hardly any photographs of him in the public sphere. He shuns publicity as a tree shuns leaves in the autumn.

As I said before, my favourite pub in the whole world is "The White Horse" (Nellie's) in Beverley, East Yorkshire. This uniquely characterful pub belongs to the Samuel Smith brewing empire  led by Humphrey Smith.

When I was there a few days ago, I asked a barmaid if I could liberate a beermat and she agreed. Here it is:-

Do you get it? Customers are not allowed to use any electronic devices in Sam Smiths pubs. No mobile phones nor laptops nor tablets. It is a visible emanation of Humphrey Smith's eccentric philosophy. He is like King Canute ordering the tide to turn back.

Here's the reverse of the same beermat:-

Part of me applauds this bloody-mindedness as I much prefer pubs in which the only noise is of people in conversation, enjoying each other's company without any need for televisions or music or electronic devices. Another part of me says that Humphrey Smith's  dictatorial approach will  prove intolerable to many potential customers - especially younger people. How long can this go on? 

Last year Humphrey Smith closed one of his  pubs for good in a fit of annoyance simply because he had overheard a single customer swearing like a trooper.  When you have as much money and as many assets as Humphrey Smith has got, you can afford to do things your own way - even if that is at significant cost.

Oh, and I almost forgot - no other pub chain in England sells its beer as cheaply as Samuel Smith pubs manage to do. A pint of bitter in my local pub costs £3.70 (US $5.00) but a similar pint in a Sam Smith's pub will usually cost £2.05 (US $3.00).

An old photo of Humphrey Smith

Root

Yesterday, we went for breakfast in a restaurant called "The Summer House". After a few minutes,  a young family followed us in and sat at the very next table. Who was the thirty something daddy in his comfy sports clothes and with his navy blue baseball cap casually reversed? Why! It was none other than Joe Root!

Joe Root is one of the best cricketers in the world and he is the current captain of  the England team. He is a very prolific run scorer having notched twenty three centuries in his test match career and sixteen centuries in one day internationals. Some say that he is the best batsman that England has ever produced. He is a Yorkshireman who hails from Sheffield. He lives a mile away from "The Summer House".

As soon as Joe spotted me he naturally wanted to snap a selfie together. I told him that it wasn't appropriate as I was having a birthday  breakfast with my family. Joe slunk away in disappointment. After all, it's not every day that a mere test cricketer gets to meet a world famous blogger.

Hypnos

Hypnos - God of Sleep

I did that thing again. You would have thought I'd have learnt my lesson by now. I was watching "Match of the Day" with a can of beer in my mitt but I never saw the end of the football show because... I fell asleep.

And when I woke up an hour had passed by.  I climbed the hairy mountain to The Land of Nod hoping to resume my slumbers but sleep evaded me like a fickle mistress. I lay there with my wife next to me in the deepest trench of sleep's ocean. I heard the bell in the tower of All Saints Church ring one and sixty minutes later I heard it ring two.

Dozing upon one's sofa can be fatal. It takes the edge off one's appetite for sleep when one eventually pulls the quilt over one's mortal flesh. Hearing the clock strike two was enough to bring me back downstairs to this laptop. I made myself a mug of tea and grabbed a couple of McVities' ginger nuts.

It's especially annoying because we are going out for breakfast this morning - celebrating our lovely daughter's thirty third birthday. Later, I will be making a special Sunday dinner with the centrepiece being a pricey leg of lamb that I bought from a farm shop in The Hope Valley. I know exactly where that animal was reared having walked across the very fields where it grew fat.

And then after dinner and birthday cake I will be heading up to "The Hammer and Pincers" for the newly resurrected Sunday quiz.  The entire day will be affected simply by having failed to follow my customary sleep pattern. The mantlepiece clock is marching towards three o'clock. Soon I will give the process another try and past experience says that it will work this time.

Sleep will let me in through the curtains where most of us go every twenty four hours - into that other territory that is so close and yet unchartered too. The Kingdom of Sleep - that magical land where we  process experiences and dream freely and remember and forget.