Report

Mission accomplished. Last week I had the idea of driving over to Louth, staying over night  and getting two long country walks in. The plan came to fruition. Yesterday I walked for three and a half hours and today, after a stroll round the charming market town of Louth, I undertook a second major walk that took four and a half hours.to complete. By the end, I was what my mother would have called - "jiggered".

At the top is the former pub where I stayed - "The Travellers" and below is the "Helal Tandoori" where I ate my curry meal last night - washed down with two pints of "Kingfisher" beer.

Being in Louth may seem a little like stepping back in time. Apart from the men who work in "Helal" and the Thai restaurant round the corner, it is a very white Anglo Saxon town - reminding me of how most of England used to be when I was a boy. The town centre is dominated by the magnificent spire of St James's Church - testament to the great wealth from wool that Louth enjoyed in the middle ages. I went inside to have a quick look round and bought Shirley a souvenir tea towel. Because I had another  big walk on the wolds to do, I did not have time to scale the tower.

Below, a Ludensian (someone from Louth) checks out the offers in the window of "Louth Travel Centre". I wonder where he wants to go - perhaps to Red Deer in Alberta, Canada or maybe  to Ludwigsburg in southwestern Germany. Who knows?

With my short and rather hurried tour of Louth finished, I set off west on the A157 road to the village of Burgh-on-Bain. There I parked Clint near the church and got ready for a twelve mile hike. What a diamond day it was! The meteorologists had got it perfectly right.  I reached the small agricultural village of Gayton-le-Wold and entered St Peter's Church. A small and very simple building. There I spotted this broken pane of coloured glass above the altar:-

By the time I reached Doningtom-on-Bain, I was eager for some sustenance. The village pub was closed but there was a well-stocked village shop run by a lady called Jenny Ward who has run that  establishment for fifty years and has recently written a book about being a village shopkeeper for half a century. I wonder what will happen when she finally hangs up her apron. Most probably there will be nobody to replace her. Tragically, so many village shops have already gone.

In Donington's  quaint twelfth century parish church dedicated to St Andrew, I noticed this slit window with a remembrance cross made from ceramic poppies...

P.S.    It seems that last night's post did not in fact publish when I pressed the button. Perhaps the wifi had gone down in "The Travellers" so better late than never - there's last night's post below. Two for the price of one.

Lincolnshire

You might remember that last week I mentioned that I would be heading off to Louth in Lincolnshire. Well here I am. I'm staying in a cheap lodging house that was once a pub called "The Travellers". Earlier, I had a most acceptable Indian meal in an establishment called "The Helal Tandoori".

During the day, I headed through Market Rasen and then up onto the rolling chalk hills known as The Lincolnshire Wolds. I bagged ten Ordnance Survey squares with a detour along lanes and then at one o' clock I parked Clint in the village of South Elkington before embarking on a three and a half hour circular walk in the spring sunshine.

Now I am struggling with my old laptop again - the one with an "s" key that doesn't work. It was also a struggle getting on the Wifi here. I will leave you with five photos from today.

Path through blossom

All Saints Church, South Elkington

Dadeville

Another day, another mass shooting in America. It's nothing new. Day after day the bullets fly. This time the finger of fate pointed at Dadeville, Alabama and a sixteenth birthday party. Tomorrow it could be... well anywhere it seems from "sea to shining sea". Maryland to Maine, Washington State to Wisconsin. It's truly, truly dreadful.

And what are The Republicans doing about the slaughter? They are making it worse. They have been making it easier to lawfully carry guns and they have been turning logic upside down - suggesting that the mass killings underline the efficacy of gun ownership. They often cite the second amendment to justify their resistance to any laws that might curtail gun ownership, leading to sensible checks and balances. They conveniently forget that the second amendment was hatched in very different times and was never intended to pave the way to mass killings.

A few minutes ago, the BBC reported this from Dadeville:-

Ben Hayes, a senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dadeville, told CNN: "We are going to pull through it well, we have a vigil soon, the community is coming together."

"We're going to sing, we're going to pray, and we're going to pray for these young people."

He added that "Nothing is going to change until we see hearts changed".

Presently, what happened in Dadeville remains unclear but I imagine that by tomorrow or the next day more light will be have been shed upon  this particular mass shooting and who was responsible for it.

I think I know who was responsible for it. It was the lawmakers from different levels who made no effort to bring in sensible gun control laws and looked the other way when the funeral corteges passed by. And they will be responsible for the next mass shooting and the next until they see the light and start to make changes that will save lives.

Varsity

I like a good quiz programme. Not one that is slow and dressed up in frilly entertainment  but a quiz programme that gets straight to the questions and values knowledge.

Here in Great Britain, the BBC hosts a weekly quiz show called "University Challenge" in which teams of four students from different universities battle against each other for supremacy. The questions are broad and pretty difficult ranging from astrophysics to the poetry of John Donne and from Formula One racing cars to the life of Alexander the Great. You never know what you are going to get.

It is an institution in this country though the programme fell into abeyance when the first quizmaster - Bamber Gascoigne - retired in 1987. The BBC resurrected the show in 1994 and since then the quizmaster has been Jeremy Paxman who will sadly retire this year because of his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease.

"University Challenge" is one of my favourite television shows and every week I manage to correctly answer a handful of questions - sometimes ones that the contestants fail to get. 

Some brilliant young men and women have appeared on the show displaying amazing stores of knowledge but there are also panellists who contribute very little indeed and you wonder what they are even doing there.

It is such a part of our modern culture that there have been several spoof versions of it, such as this one from six years ago:-

And this one from even further back in time which I believe was first screened in May, 1984 as an episode within a very popular anarchic comedy show called "The Young Ones" which incidentally I mentioned just the other day when I encountered my old friend Neil:-

Charity

The "Thank You" card was from Dove House Hospice

Before my younger brother Simon died, he told me how he wanted any remaining money to be distributed. Most of what he left behind came from a pension plan he had agreed with a well-known insurance company. He showed me the policy and  confirmed that I was listed as the "sole beneficiary". 

At that moment, he probably imagined that it would be pretty straightforward for me to make a successful claim. Little did he know that the process would be painfully slow, difficult and stressful. It took me eight long months to get the money out of them and in the end I think it was the physical letter that I sent to their Customer Services office in Edinburgh that finally got the desired result.

It was a hell of a ride and not one that I ever wanted to take. Anyway, I am pleased to say that nearly all the money has now been distributed according to Simon's wishes. He had told me that he wanted the lion's share to go to what he called "the next generation" - my two children and our brother Paul's three children over in western Ireland. In consequence, all five of them have now received just under £25,000 each to spend or use as they wish.

I am retaining a wad of cash to pay for Simon's gravestone and he also wanted some money to "go to charity". Unfortunately, he never specified which charities so I applied my own judgement and sent equal amounts to The Royal National Lifeboats Institution (RNLI), The Woodland Trust and Dove House Hospice, Hull - where he died.

Of course some people are anti-charity, embracing the myth that any donated money never actually reaches its intended target. It is siphoned off, wasted by administrators or simply stolen. Such tales abound but in my estimation that is nearly all utter nonsense and a convenient excuse for not being charitable.

I was a shop worker for Oxfam for five years and Shirley is currently working in our local "Age Concern" shop.  The RNLI saves seafarers' lives while The Woodland Trust plants  trees and maintains woodlands and Dove House Hospice provides invaluable end-of-life care. Quite simply, without charitable donations these admirable organisations would not be able to function. So please don't tell me you don't believe in charity because the money gets routinely wasted. If the truth be known, that is pure...

Stuff

©PaulThompson 2022

Weatherwise, it has been an unsettled week here in South Yorkshire. Yesterday was a good example - blustery showers interspersed with blue skies and sunshine. You didn't know whether you were coming or going. And it has been quite cold too.

That's how it is when you live on the western edge of Europe at a latitude of 53.3811° N, beside the temperamental Atlantic Ocean. This week's weather has been governed by an airflow from the Arctic but at the weekend a high pressure system from the south west will bring warmer and more settled weather.

To get more walking and photography done in what I call virgin territory, I have booked a room in a cheap guesthouse in the Lincolnshire market town of Louth. That's on Monday night. I plan to get two long walks in - one on the Monday and one next Tuesday before I head home.

Louth is under two hours from this keyboard. I have had a hankering to go there since before COVID and now I am off. It sits on the eastern side of the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds which is a beautiful area to explore. Strangely, it doesn't attract hordes of visitors. Co-incidentally, Frances, Stew and Phoebe's new house is on Louth Road here in Sheffield.

They were round here yesterday evening and I treated them to one of my famous spaghetti bolognese meals. The sauce had been simmering for three hours with just an occasional stir - softening the texture of the minced beef and nicely blending the various ingredients together. My sauce has evolved significantly from the one I was patiently taught to make by my Italian flatmate Paulo Palompo when I was at university. He has lived in The Shetland Isles for many years now.

Last evening I saw a film recording of the London grandbabe's current life. Scanned in his/her mother's womb, he/she is wriggling and growing and thankfully all appears very normal. The same is true of the new Sheffield grandbabe though I haven't seen moving images of that particular bundle of joy. It remains an exciting time.

Not too long ago we thought we would never become grandparents and now it looks like we will be blessed with at least three grandchildren. I hope the two unborn cousins will bring as much delight into our lives as Little Phoebe has done. Last night, as she was heading home, she pushed me back over the the threshold saying, "Back in Grandpa!" Cheeky little monkey!

Vegas

In spite of my busy schedule and all of the demands placed upon my time, I have been playing around with Microsoft  Image Creator again. This time, I asked the system to give me pictures of Las Vegas in different styles. I wonder if you can match the seven pictures up with the style or artist listed below? 

A

B

c

D

E

F

G

Styles

1. Style of Andy Warhol
2. Style of Georgia O'Keeffe
3. Style of The Simpsons
4. Style of Pieter Breugel The Elder
5. Style of Salvador Dali
6. Style of Hieronymus Bosch
7. Style of Joseph Mallord William Turner